‘Where’s he gone?’ Elle asks.
I
can’t see. All I can see is white, like when someone takes a flash photograph
in a dark room.
‘My
eyes!’ Graham whines.
‘He
can’t have just disappeared,’Elle continues.
Slowly,
my vision returns. This time there’s no scorch mark. Teague has indeed
disappeared, leaving nothing behind him.
‘I
thought he was going to explode,’ I say, relieved. ‘Maybe he’s travelled again?
Like we can?’
‘That
didn’t look like travelling to me,’ Elle replies.
‘Did
you hear what he said about Robin Thacker?’ I look at the pair of them.
‘Death
hasn’t changed you,’ Graham says. ‘Still on Thacker?’
‘I
told you, if you gave it a chance after chapter one, you’d get into it.’
‘If
I was supposed to read it, then he would have been good enough to grip my
attention from line one,’ Graham says, like he’s considering Thacker for
publication.
I
raise a finger, opening my mouth to object but Elle shushes us both.
‘You
said Thacker annotated the margins to his first edition,’ she says. ‘Teague
said he saw a page of one of Thacker’s books on the internet and it sounded
like that’s where he started, maybe we should follow him.’
‘Wait,’
Graham stopped her. ‘Where did you find a first edition Thacker?’
‘Oh
I broke into the Thacker museum yesterday. I left the Alchemist manuscript with
a heavily depressed man who lives in a hayfield. Sorry, I left that bit out.’
Graham’s
eyes widened. ‘I have to say, death sounds a lot more interesting than life.’
‘If
you ignore the fact that you can get lost in your memories at any given
moment,’ I challenge.
‘Depends
on the memory,’ retorts Graham. ‘But I’ll stick with my fleshy prison.’
‘So
we go and find the manuscript again,’ says Elle. ‘You said that Yates took it
back to the Thacker museum after you left right?’
‘I
said he was going to,’ I say. I hold out my hands. ‘Graham, pack that stuff
away, we’ll need all of it. We’re travelling again.’
Graham
starts throwing indiscriminate items of equipment into a backpack, leaving the
EMF meter and the ionizer until last. ‘Can’t we take a car or something?’ he
moans
‘That’s
like saying you want to ride with the luggage when you can fly first class,’ I
say. Elle takes my right hand, I hold out my left to him.
Graham
shuts off the ionizer and shoves it in the bag. We’ll now be invisible to him.
‘This
is discrimination you know,’ Graham mutters, holding out his hand to thin air.
I grab it and we disappear, the scent of hay clear in my nostrils.
We
arrive in the hayfield to the sound of a bird squawking. I look to my left and
a black raven sits on a haystack. It gazes at Graham who takes a step and holds
his head.
‘That
place gives me a headache,’ he says. ‘So what are we going to do about Teague?’
He
looks around and notices he can’t see us again.
‘What
are we going to do about him?’ I ask Elle. ‘I assumed that if we did what he
asked he’d stabalise in one form or another, but he disappeared?’
‘Hopefully
this Thacker book will give us a clue,’ she replies. ‘Here, tell Graham, as
much as I enjoy watching his confused face.’
She
hands me the notebook again. I quickly explain to Graham and hand him the note,
telling him to go towards the house and wait for us or Yates to open the door.
We
traverse the hayfield quickly. Part of me looks forward to seeing Yates again.
Part of me hopes that he’s not even there. That he might be off adventuring
somewhere, meeting people, building some sort of life for himself.
An
unexplained tightness grips my stomach as we reach the door. I knock three
times then stand back and wait. All we can hear is the raven, still squawking
back in the field.
‘Maybe
he’s out?’ Elle says. ‘And I thought we were going to a museum, not his house?’
I
can’t explain myself why I felt drawn here, not the museum. I still feel bad
for almost getting Yates lost in my memories. I guess I just want to make sure
he’s alright before I go searching for books and disappearing men.
I
rap sharply on the door again.
‘That’s
very eerie you know,’ says Graham, watching the door that knocks itself.
‘Come
on,’ I say. I realise I still haven’t answered Elle’s question. I grasp the
handle and push. The door’s unlocked, of course it is. The man who sits in his
house with the lights on, spurning company but attracting it all the same would
naturally leave his door unlocked.
We
walk inside. The books are still stacked to the ceiling, but I expect nothing
less.
‘Wow,’
Elle and Graham say in unison.
‘Yates!’
I call.
There’s
no reply. He must be out. I relax a little, walking further into the house.
Something keeps me going. My conscience tells me to leave. It’s not my house,
we should go. But still I walk forward. I think a part of me already knows.
I
hear Yates before I see him. A drone of mutterings reaches my ears from the
next room. It not sure if the sound emerges from the kitchen or the living
room. It feels like it's all around me, like the man's thoughts have become
trapped in the walls of the house.
I
turn into the living room. The floor is covered in books, ripped from their
spines, the pages laid out and scribbled on. Yates has made maps with some of
them; yellow old pages sit side by side hanging on the wall. The rest is on the
floor, some screwed into balls and cast aside, others kept for importance sit
beside him in the epicentre of the explosion of pages.
'He's
saying something,' he mutters. 'It's a message through time.'
'Yates,'
I say, reaching out a hand to him. 'Yates, get up.'
His
face is covered in ink marks. Some of them are fingerprints.
'Easton,'
he says. 'You have to see, he wrote so much down in here.'
Elle
is behind me. Graham starts to look around the edge of the room, reading the
spines of the stacked books. For once I'm glad he can't see.
'You
have to get up, Yates,' I say.
'But
there's no time,' he pleads. 'There are secrets, I have to find out where he
went. There's a path!' He gets excited, gesticulating wildly with his hands.
'See on the map there on the wall, there's a way to the great beyond.'
'Beyond?'
Elle whispers. 'I thought we were beyond. There's more?'
'What
are you talking about, Yates?' I ask, trying to keep my voice calm. There's
something very unsettling about seeing someone you know in such a state.
'This
isn't all there is, there's a life after this. I think Thacker followed it.'
'You
think there's a life after the afterlife?' Elle says, skeptical.
'Who's
this?' Yates asks surveying her. His voice turns stern. A slice of the old
Yates creeping back.
'This
is Elle,' I say. 'I ran into her.'
'So
you just collect women then,' Yates snaps. 'Leave some for the rest of us.'
'We're
not a cake, you know,' Elle remarks.
'Yates,
you're never going to meet anyone at all if you stay locked away like this?' I
say, feeling like I'm repeating myself. The cold grip of guilt seizes my chest.
This would have never happened if I'd stayed with him.
'Some
things are more important.' He raises his voice. 'I'm interested in the secrets
of the universe,' he says. 'Not girls.'
‘Do
you want us to leave, Yates?’ I ask.
He
pauses. ‘I want to show you things,’ he says. ‘All I ask is that you’re
interested. I thought you of all people would be, Easton.’
‘I
am, Yates,’ I continue. ‘But this isn’t healthy. People are important.’
Yates
puts his head in his hands. ‘You just don’t understand,’ he moans.
I
sit down on one side of him. Elle sits on the other. We share a look.
‘Why
don’t you show us what you’ve found, Yates?’ Elle suggests, resting her fingers
on the sleeve of his jumper. He seems to jump like he’s just been touched by a
live wire.
‘Thank
you, Elle,’ he says, the air of a teacher returning to his voice. ‘I’m glad
someone’s interested.’ He glares at me.
I
sit back, my brows knitted together, wondering what I did wrong.
‘Thacker
was obsessed with the idea of ghosts,’ Yates explains. ‘See here…’ he points at
the open manuscript in front of him. ‘In the story, Rory appears to Cecily in
the attic of the manor where she’s a servant girl. Thacker wrote next to the
line Hildebrand Manor. I know for a
fact that Thacker once lived at a place called Hildebrand when he was a young
boy. He speaks of a ghost that appeared to him, a lady in white. I think The Alchemist is part
auto-biographical.’ He looks to me, then Elle, his eyes alive with fervour.
‘Isn’t that amazing. Our very own Robin Thacker was visited by a ghost.’
I
think for a second. ‘We were told by someone that Thacker might have known
something about how to make ghosts visible,’ I explain. ‘We were visited by
someone, a man who could jump between life and death…’
I
was going to explain further, but Yates starts. ‘But…but…that’s it,’ he says.
‘That’s the key to the whole thing!’
He
starts leafing through the pages of the manuscript like he’s been possessed.
I’m worried he’ll rip the pages.
‘He
wrote these words,’ Yates says, pointing at the bottom of one page. ‘And I
couldn’t understand them. It was driving me mad, Easton!’
I
follow his finger and read. ‘Only when we
walk the tightrope across the limbo between life and the shadow of death will
be find the great beyond. To travel between states is the key.’
It’s
like Thacker’s speaking to us from beyond the grave. I wish I could find him.
He must be living somewhere as a ghost just like us.
‘What’s
he doing here?’ asks Yates, surveying Graham for the first time.
‘Just a young waif we picked up on our travels,’
jokes Elle.
‘He’s my best friend,’ I say. Elle places a hand
to her chest looking pained.
‘But he’s alive?’
‘That’s what I wanted to tell you,’ I begin. ‘I
think this all connects together. We were following this man. He somehow
managed to cross to the afterlife and back again.’
‘But he de-stabalised himself and blew up,’
finishes Elle, nodding.
Yates looks from me to her as if he’s trying to
ascertain who’s pulling the big joke.
‘But how does this tie in with your friend?’ he
asks.
‘Graham owns a lot of science equipment and we
figured out how to make ourselves visible.’
‘Do you think Thacker knew?’ he asks. He strokes
the edge of the yellow pages. I wonder does is realises he’s doing it?
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘But this doesn’t change the fact
that you can’t lock yourself away like this. If you come with us we can work
out what happened to Teague.’
‘The exploding man,’ Elle explains.
‘Are you guys still there?’ Graham asks, turning
round. ‘I’m going to set up the equipment again, I want to try something.’
‘Where will you be going?’ asks Yates.
‘I’ll tell you when we work it out,’ I say. ‘I’m
not even sure what we’re looking for.’
‘Teague seemed to just want our help,’ Elle says.
‘Like you said. He pleaded with us to do it, but I don’t think he’s gone. It
wasn’t like we were killing him.’
‘But where else is there to go?’ Yates says.
‘Unless he’s gone to the great beyond?’
‘What is this great beyond exactly?’ Elle asks.
‘Does the book ever specify?’
‘Just a lot of mentions,’ Yates says. ‘It seems
like his reason for writing the book was exploring the idea of the afterlife,
and where we go next. It always seems like he knew people stay after they die,
and can visit the living like your friend.’
‘Except Teague was just looking for his wife,’ I
say. ‘He was living and he got obsessed with the dead. I suppose that’s what I
am with Penny to some extent. I just have no place to start.’
Elle touches my arm. I’m grateful for the
comfort.
There’s a whir from the other side of the room as
Graham starts up the ionizer. He looks directly at us and I know we’re visible
again.
‘There
you are,’ he says. ‘Bring me up to speed.’
‘Thacker knew everything,’ Elle says. ‘That
people become ghosts, that they can appear to the living, oh and there’s a
great beyond we can move on to.’
‘Spiffing,’ Graham says. ‘So what next?’
‘Well I don’t know about Teague,’ Yates says.
Being visible to the living world seems to have calmed him. We’ve given proof
to his delusions. ‘But I do know where I’d like to go.’
‘We’re all ears,’ I say.
‘I’d like to visit my stepfather,’ he says after
a deep breath. ‘All these years, I’ve been waiting for him to visit. Sitting
here waiting for him. I wanted to show him some of what he showed me in life.’
Graham and Elle don’t ask what happened to Yates.
I’m sure they can guess.
‘What do you have planned?’ I ask.
‘I’ve been thinking about it for years,’ he
replies. ‘How I’d scare him, make him feel small. But I’m a coward. I don’t
think I ever could.’
‘That’s where we come in,’ says Elle. ‘I’ve
always wanted to do some haunting.’
Graham’s been fiddling at the back of the room.
‘There!’ he says.
He’s holding something in his hands. Cobbled together
from spare bits of electrical equipment and what looks like a video game
controller, he presents it like a prize.
‘I call it the de-ghostifier,’ he says,
triumphantly. ‘Means you can be visible all the time.’
‘If you ever have a kid, let hubby do the
naming,’ Elle remarks with a blank face.
Yates raises his head at her words, but doesn’t
say anything. Graham just looks sheepish.
‘So where does your stepfather live?’ I ask to
break the tension.
‘If he’s never moved, he’ll be in London still,’
he says. ‘He always had this place, and a penthouse in the city.’
‘Penthouse?’
‘Oh he’s very rich,’ Yates says. ‘He always has
been. But it took something from him. It’s all he ever cared about.’
‘Then
let’s go show him who’s boss,’ Elle says standing up. ‘We need a battleplan.’
‘What are you thinking?’
‘I’m thinking we scare the crap out of someone
who deserves it,’ Elle replies, her eyes glinting.
‘Why are you helping?’ Yates asks. ‘You don’t even
know who I am?’
‘ I know enough about you to know you could use a
good friend,’ she replies.
‘What did he do?’ Graham asks.
‘He made me feel insignificant,’ Yates replies.
A lot of the times we look at people who’ve been
abused. We tiptoe around them and think we can’t ask some things. But how can
we ever help if we never ask?
‘But what do we do about Teague?’ I ask.
‘He’ll turn up,’ Elle says. ‘Things you’re
looking for always turn up when you clean up a mess. Finding stuff 101.’
‘But what do we do about all this?’ Yates asks.
‘I can’t leave it, I just can’t. It’s important, I know it is.’
‘We’ll come back to it,’ I say. ‘We’ll work out
what it all means.’
He looks down. A life’s work crammed into a day.
‘Okay,’
he says. ‘But we take the manuscript with us.’
