Box Set - Chapter Four

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.

            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.

                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.

                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.’
                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.’

            ‘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!’
                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.