Box Set - Chapter Five

            But I don’t move. I ball my fists and set off down the path with the gravel crunching beneath my feet. I need to concentrate on why I’m doing this in the first place.

I make up my mind as soon as I see him on the other side of the door. When you’re alive, you can’t see how a person is feeling. You can walk down the street and pass a suicide victim, a guilty cheat and a victim of abuse without ever knowing. Some people just know how to hide it.

            Now, I can’t forget the sight of the lonely man with his books. A flickering outline of blackness standing out against a backdrop of warmth. I don’t know how I can see. I can’t read thoughts, I just get a feeling, and I think I see it in colour. I remember Benjamin, and when I picture him, I feel him before I recall his old pockmarked face. He feels like smoky old whiskey, deep orange, sitting at the side of the cupboard, watching the world go by.

            I wonder how I look to other people. Inside I recognize the desperation, the feeling that I should be somewhere else. Finding Penny, understanding why I’ve stayed here.

            I’m walking through the grass again, ignoring the wetness soaking my trousers. Some things you can’t leave. I could go in search of my girlfriend. I could make the selfish decision. But here is someone who needs a person. He might be irritable, and jump to conclusions about the slightest thing against him, but the thought of those marks around his neck, imagining him remembering his final seconds on the earth, dangling from the ceiling, with the burn of rope squeezing the life from his body, is too much for me to bear.

            I stop. I don’t know why I choose the spot I do, but it feels right. I stand between four haystacks, like the points of a compass. It helps to imagine it like that. My directions might be off completely, but regardless, I stand with the points of a compass and it steadies me. It helps me recognize the direction I have to take.

            I know where I want to go. A place where I wish I could take Yates, and show him something he’d love.

            But that’s not an option. I have to bring the wonder to him. It’ll just take a moment of stealth, choosing the right moment and though it pains the memory of my law-abiding life, today I’ll become a thief.

            With more concentration than I’ve ever had the power to muster. I begin counting.

            ‘One,’ I say, out loud. I think of any ghost walking by, seeing me standing in a dewy field in the middle of the night. I still don’t know where I am but maybe I don’t need to. Knowing where you are is more than coordinates on a map. This is the hayfield by the castle of books. A place I can see, feel and smell and I will return to this place.

            ‘Two,’ I continue. I know where I’m going. I’ve never been there but I can visualise it. I build a picture in the blackness behind my eyelids. The green front door. The Georgian building, grey stone, sandwiched between tens of others like a street of stone sardines.

            ‘Three.’ There could only be one place. A place where I could get something for him to show that I cared. He might come with me if he only knew that.

            ‘Four.’ Why do I care? Why am I doing this? The answer is simple to me but the selfish part of me screams out. You don’t need to.

            ‘Five.’ But that’s the point. I refuse to start this life as I left the last one; unable to take risks and speak up for myself, being the wallflower at the party, ignoring the chance to help other people because I was scared to.

            ‘Six.’ 48 Doughty Street, London, WC1N 2LX. How many times had I looked up the address? Stared at pictures of it on the internet. I would go there one day. See the house of my hero. But there’s my biggest regret, screaming out of the darkness. I should always have done the things I wanted to do, because a second on a road, and a few inches of burst rubber had taken that all from me.

            ‘Seven.’ Concentrate. I am on the doorstep. My hand reaches towards the door. The image becomes almost tangible. The curtain between us seems thinner. Throbbing, pulsing like a living object. The fabric of the universe is mine, something I can brush aside and step through.

            ‘Eight.’ Hold on, Yates. So many times I’d cried in the darkness for no reason. Embarrassed, thinking my problems were greater than everyone else’s. When all I needed to do was step over that line and seize a day.

            ‘Nine.’ But now I can. I can help a man who needs it. Rescue him from the dungeon he’s created for himself.

            ‘Ten.’
                I don’t want to open my eyes. I feel steady so I know I haven’t fallen into the Edge.

                I try to sense the space around me to gather my surroundings. I concentrate and there they are, the feelings of all the people around me. Some of them are sleeping, their consciousnesses showing the gentle relaxing hum of fantasies or sometimes the dark shaking terror of dread; apparently the dead dream too.

                I force myself to pry my eyelids open, reluctant as though the action will give me a static shock.

                The feeling of the ground has already given it away. Hard not soft, dry and cold but not wet.

                I’ve moved.

                I’ve always wanted to see the Robin Thacker museum. Sandwiched on an old Georgian street, I look up at it and fulfil a life’s ambition. First though, I take in the magnitude of what I’ve accomplished. It felt as though I was brushing aside a curtain, when my scientific mind knows that I have somehow managed to bend space together, drawing this street in London to touch a field in God knows where.

                What does that make me? I know the astronomical requirements to transport matter in such a way. Being a sponge of sci-fi comic books, I had of course looked up the theoretical ideas they were based on. Teleportation, psychic networks, gene manipulation, I know everything is possible within the realms of our imagination, and apparently after death, freed from our prison of body and mass, we can put the ideas into practice. As a being of pure thought, I am imagination and nothing else.  

                I know what I need lies within the building in front of me. I know Yates and I share Thacker as a common interest, a bridge between the two of us. It was a common interest that Penny showed me on the day we met and pulled me out of a lifetime of timidness to become something so much more.

                Without a moment’s hesitation, I march across the pavement, through the stillness of a night in London and travelled through the front door.

                The sensation is becoming normal to me: a second of discomfort like holding my breath and then a release on the other side.

                The Thacker museum smells of books in a completely different way to Yates’ house. It has the precise scent of pages, but with it comes the sort of age that means something, of words a century old which will unite two spirits in the present.
                The hallway is deserted and dark. I try to pinpoint features in the blackness but it takes a while for my sight to adjust.

                The well-trodden floor beneath my feet does not creak as I step on it, but I imagine it would if I were alive. The wall is lined with pictures of the man whose memory inhabits these walls. He enjoys life with his family, sits writing at an old roll-top desk, Robin Thacker looks content in life. A full life that emerges in his writing, in characters that feel like they can step from the page.

                I walk the hall, scared that I’ll set off an alarm. I smile, knowing that haunting a house didn’t really achieve such things. It is as though I’m not here. I can sit and read the hundred year old pages for as long as I wish, and no one will disturb me. As much as I want to, I know I can’t, I came here to complete a mission.

                As I pass what I assume used to be Thacker’s living room, converted into a small café for customers, I make a promise to come back here. Maybe in the daytime to share the experience with people. An experience shared improves it tenfold.

                It doesn’t take me long to find manuscripts. There is a whole room towards the back of the house with a series of long glass cases. I imagine it being dim during daylight to preserve the yellowing pages. Even at this hour of the night, the heating is turned up. I feel myself begin to sweat, but when I raise my hand to my brow, no moisture comes away with my hand.  I remember what Yates said about the tea. This is the memory of sweating. My mind knows I should, so I feel like I am.

                I walk through the room slowly, the carpet caressing the soles of my shoes. I wish I could spend more time here. Snippets of lines I recognize from his books leap out of the cases. I see that each page appears almost black, like it has been scribbled all over.

                For a moment I’m offended. Who would do such a thing? On closer inspection, nose pressed up against the glass without the hint of a breath, I see a spidery handwriting that can only be Thacker’s. He annotated all his books. I’m dying to read them, and explore beyond the pages on display.

                Quickly, I find what I’m looking for. The Alchemist. It has been at the back of my mind, following me through my introduction to the afterlife. As I read the lines at the top of the page opened, I know why and it seems far too obvious and more than a little unsettling.

                It is the story of a ghost.
              It follows a girl called Cecily, who finds a book in her father’s attic. A lot of rich people try to take it from her, as deep within its pages lies the secret of how to turn any metal into gold and precious gems.

 I had often wondered if the book in The Alchemist was real. My better judgement says no. Cecily never finds out how to make wealth out of nothing, but on her journey she meets a ghost. A boy who tells her she can live forever.

                I love the book so much, but now, recalling its plot, I’m a little startled. I’d always considered it fantasy, but now, in the position of Roland, the ghost in the tale, I can see that it is quite true to life and death.

                He must have known.

                The thought occurs to me as though someone has lit a roman candle in my mind. Did Thacker know? Was he in touch with any spirits, or believed in the tiniest encounter so deeply that he created worlds and characters to live in.

                I stare down at the worn pages. I recognize one of my favourite scenes at first glance. It is the first time Cecily meets the ghostly child. The scared boy who died years before and has haunted an old abandoned orphanage because he was scared of everywhere outside.

                My eyes focus on a single line of dialogue. A line I have never truly understood until now.

                ‘But Cecily,’ he proclaimed, tears streaming from his face. ‘Every time I close my eyes, I get lost. I’m so scared Cecily, I’m so scared.’

                I had never really read into the line. It’s innocuous and doesn’t appear to say anything at all. But, quite suddenly, I feel an even greater sympathy for the boy, because that’s what has been happening to me for hours now. Every time I close my eyes, I lose myself in the Edge.

                Yates has to see this book. Without a second’s thought, I plunge my hands through the glass. It won’t be gone for long, I’ll return it before the sun comes up. My hands close around the leather hardcover. It feels fragile in my hands like it may crumble to dust at any second. I curl my fingers around it and lift it, starting to feel the pinch of the glass around my elbows.

                I worry that the book won’t come with me for a second. I no longer exist, but the book does. I don’t worry for long though as my elbow, forearms, wrists and then hands holding the book pass through the glass.

                The perfect crime.

            Loud noises have always made me jump and apparently nothing changes in death.

A few seconds after the book’s pages leave the display case, the loudest alarm I have every heard erupts all around me. It’s the sort of loudness that takes over everything to such a great extent that you forget where you are for a second, and even what you’re doing.

            I come to my senses halfway down the hallway. Clutching the precious, stolen book in hand, I steal across the carpet, taking a deep breath as I plunge into the door, emerging on the doorstep.

            Dogs bark outside and as I look to my left I see one, behind the bars of the front gate of the house next door. I’ll never know for sure, but I’m certain he’s looking at me.

            The alarm still behind me, I don’t stop to consider. My human instincts still ruling my spirit ones, I tear across the roads, passing through a gate of one of those parks that sit before squares of houses all over London.

I feel the easier sensation of passing through matter that already has large gaps in it, almost like I’m not squeezed quite so much.

The fence and the canopy of trees high above appear to shut off the sound of the alarm a little. I duck into a thick bush and crouch down on the cold earth. It is only then that I fully remember that I’m invisible to everyone. Everyone except the dog.

I shake my head, clutching the book to my chest. The dog couldn’t see me, it was just a coincidence. He was looking at the source of the street-wakingly loud sound.

I wonder if he could he see the book though. Logic dictates that since I was able to pass the book through the glass, the book has taken on the same structure as me, simply through touch. Does this mean that I’ve taken on some sort of conductive property? Everything I touch seems to react in some way; solid matter I can pass through, equally solid objects I can take through anything. Even when I touch humans they involuntarily shudder. Is that what they’re feeling? What would even happen if I touched them for longer? The scientist in me wants to find out, but it would be difficult in my current form. Test subjects don’t really throw themselves at the feet of ghosts.

I’ve regained my breath. I know I have to go back. I promise myself I’ll return within the night. I pray I don’t cause too much distress in the time the book is gone.
I close my eyes and count to ten, imagining the feeling of the dewy grass and the smell of hay, the pinpricks of light in the distance reaching through the darkness.

            This time the curtain moves aside a lot more easily. It’s as though I’m stepping back over the threshold of a door I’ve left open. Short, well kept lawn becomes long grass, heavy, still London air becomes clear country night, and the darkness above flickers into a million, billion stars.

            I take a deep breath and relish the silence around me. The sound of the alarm still rings in my ears and I don’t look forward to returning later that night.

            I practically sprint across the field and through the gate. I slow to a walk when I reach the gravel, not wishing to disturb Yates inside.

            I find I’m fearful of what I may find. What if I’ve left him too long? Everyone deserves a chance at happiness and I know there are things that I want to show him. Thinking about the book passing through the glass at my touch makes me wonder. Can I take Yates with me wherever I go? Can we step through the curtain together? Maybe we can find something that will turn his death around.

            Because it is clear that the man was depressed. His repeated reference to sadness in his life, his shutting himself away in a house in the middle of nowhere, the eternal cutting short of sentences and one-word conversation killers. Here is a man who is not used to company, and he cried out for it in life. It appears he continues to in death.

            So I’ll give him company, and bring him something that may bring a smile to his eternally aging features.

            I reach the door and take a breath, tucking the old book under my arm. Taking heed of his previous words, I raise my hand, pause and then give three sharp raps on the green front door. I marvel at how simple it is to touch an object, and how similarly easy it is to pass through it. The world obeys my thoughts. It settles me. I am finally finding an affinity with my new body.

            ‘Yates!’ I call. ‘I’m not going to leave until you open the door! I have something you’ll want to see.’

            The silence around me is all the reply I get.

            I close my eyes and reach out into the house. There he is, in the hallway, paused again, but different. The darkness has grown, and he feels different. I’m wondering if it’s the same person at all when there is movement and the door flies open in front of me.

            ‘I don’t want to tell you again,’ he says. I see the sparse fuzz on his upper lip and thick black hair covering his previously bald temples. ‘Leave me alone!’

            Yates the man is present in his voice. The sharp eyes are still there, but they exist in the body of a teenage boy.