Box Set - Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

            It doesn’t take me long to find the Hotel Fontana. The Trevi Fountain is well signposted throughout the city. All in all it takes me about 10 minutes at a very fast walk.

            When I turn the corner and the piazza spreads out before me, like a big reveal by a magician, I have to pause for a second. The fountain has that sort of effect on you. Like it demands to be looked at. Sort of like a person who knows they’re attractive, and you do, you just know you could never achieve quite such a perfect piece of art.

            Penny used to wonder why I called her beautiful. Every day, without fail, when she turned towards me like and I was reminded. She was beautiful without telling the world she was. She’d say her nose was too long and her chin was chubby, and a thousand other imperfections a person can find in their own appearance. I’d say her features were hers, and her features stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t want someone who demanded to be looked at. I want the most beautiful girl in my world.

            I tear my eyes away from the awe inspiring fountain, with horses and Gods springing out of the high, pillared building behind it. Water cascading down from tens of water jets, tumbling over waterfalls and trickling into the swimming pool sized pond below.

            The Hotel Fontana sits facing it directly. I imagine waking up to that every morning, a wealth of gelato parlours lining its left hand side with flavours from cool looking lemon, to chocolate and hazelnut, and tutti frutti to beyond.

            My mouth salivates as I watch some tourists happily licking away in the sunshine, before I cross the square to the hotel.

            It’s small, sandwiched between two larger hotels like it’s fighting to burst out and grow in the piazza.

            The door is glass and I dart inside as two fairly wealthy looking people emerge, dressed in expensive suits.

            It snaps shut behind me and I wonder how I’m going to find the man. I was compelled to follow the slightly unsettling instruction, my logic being – how can he hurt me anymore.

            I had seen him disappear in front of the bus as though he possessed the same ability as me. If he can become like me, can I go the other way? Can I appear to the living and breathing.
            The memory of a heart beating quickly in my chest, I cross the small lobby, past the bored looking security guard and mount the stairs, meaning to search every room for my spontaneously corporeal friend.
               The hotel is old, but not musty, and the stairs creak under the footfalls of other guests, but with charm, not age. I dare myself to stay the night here if I’m still in Rome when I get tired. Part of me wants to experience the night in charming opulence, but a ruling side of me fears waking up next to a naked old person when I’d presumed their late coming home meant the room was vacant.

                I consider ducking my head through each door to see who’s inside, but I find I’m far too polite. I stand in front of a walnut door and simply can’t bring myself to risk catching someone in a compromising position.

                I step back on the thick pile carpet and try another tact. I close my eyes, like always and reach out. If the man meant the matchbook as a message, then he’ll have made himself easy for me to find.

                The prickle spreads through my fingers like always and I’m surprised as I find nothing of a ghostly nature in the hotel. It’s silently serene. The absence of something I expect to find sends a shiver up my spine. I half expect the moleskin man to jump out at me at any second.

                I’m just about to turn away and give up on my latest peculiar experience when I notice something. Just an echo: a whisper on the air.

                I concentrate and try to trace the resonance. Because that’s what it is - a resonance. With the memory of the pub music still fresh, I see the spirit world a little clearer. I look at my own hand, and see the bright pulsing presence of my own continuing life, like my very being is coursing with determination.

                There, in my peripheral vision, a blur, a vibration.

                I turn my head and it’s gone, like it’s an echo of light that moves away, just as I had imagined when I first saw this place.

                I screw up my eyes and clench my fists. There is something there, living in the walls of this hotel.

                The image appears so slowly that I have to convince myself that I’m seeing anything at all. 

                On the wall to my right, a handprint comes into focus, like an old photograph in a dark room.

                I raise my hand, feeling unsettled in a very real sense, moving with my eyes closed. I encounter resistance, like my hand and the print are the opposite poles of a magnet. Yet I feel compelled. Driven to touch the mark.

                Pushing with all my might, I pass through the resistance, as though I’m moving through invisible jelly. With a jerk, I’m through and my hand meets the image on the wall.

                The scream that splits the air takes the air from my lungs. An image, blinding as an eclipse bursts to my left. A man appears, but he’s not a man, eyes black holes, mouth disproportionate, locked in a terrible, never ending shriek.
  I’m staring into a person shaped hole in the universe. The light shines on me and I put up my other hand in complaint to shield my eyes. My head throbs like I’m staring into the sun.

                I tug on my hand, but it’s stuck fast to the handprint on the wall. Is the person getting closer, it’s hard to tell but I feel a heat, like I’m moving closer to a bonfire.

                I tug as hard as I can and my hand comes away. The man disappears before my eyes, like someone, someone has turned him off. I know it’s a man. I can’t say how, but something about him feels inherently mannish. Like I could see him but I couldn’t.

                Is that what the man on the street led me to? Is he there even now, just out of my vision.

                Frightened by the idea, I stumble backwards and make my way back down the stairs leaving the handprint, now tinged slightly blue behind me.

                I run down the stairs a little too quickly, so my legs take over from my brain and do the work for me. I reach the lobby and sprint out the front door. I feel an echo now, a presence in the place, like lines of smoke on the air, tendrils worming their way towards me and inching their way towards my skin.

                I close my eyes and burst through the door into the sunlight. I keep going and barrel right into someone.

                The wind is knocked out of me and I feel very sick all of a sudden. Falling back onto the floor, I come to rest and wipe my brow. Cold sweat comes away with my hand, and the feeling of sickness intensifies.

                ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ says the girl. She picks herself off the ground and pulls back a shock of pink hair that has fallen over her face.

                ‘I-I…’ I stammer.

                ‘Use your words,’ she says, looking at me with exceptionally dark eyes. They must be a very dark shade of brown.

                ‘I’m sorry,’ I finish. ‘Wait, are you dead?’

                ‘Well aren’t we a charmer,’ she says, sitting cross legged on the ground. ‘I like to think if myself as living.’

                I nod as I agree with her. I look from side to side, watching out for the starbright man.

                ‘I’d say you look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ she starts. ‘But I’d have to eternally condemn myself for using a dreadful cliché.’

I laugh, untying a portion of the knot that had bound my throat.

          My name's Elle,' she announces, holding out her small hand. 'World traveller and ghost tripper-overer extraordinaire.' 

          'Easton,' I reply, shaking it. 

          'Elle-and-Easton.' She said it quickly. 'Sounds like a town.'

          'Where would it be?' I ask, glad to have a distraction. 

          'A mountain somewhere.' She answers instantly like she's known all along. 'With a view of the sea. I've always wanted a view of the sea.'

          She pauses for a second, closing her eyes like she imagines it, like she can taste the salty air on her lips. I find myself drawn to her. Of all the people I've met so far, she makes me feel at ease the most, even more than gentle Benjamin. 

          'What brings you to Rome?' I ask. I can see Elle can change subject like the wind, each strand of flyaway hair a branch of conversation she could travel down.

          'What doesn't bring me to Rome?' she replies. She lowers her voice. 'Well...I found a treasure map, one that only the dead can see...'

          'Really?'

          'Of course not,' she says, laughing. 'I wish. I just came here to see the sights, make some friends, steal some gelato. Why else come to Italy? Why did you use the Hotel Fontana like a cannon?'

          'I -' I pause. It's a little hard to explain why I used the hotel like a cannon. I don't know what happened in there myself. 

          'Is it a secret?' she whispers. 'I won't tell, scout's honour.'

          'Well, it's a little weird,' I begin.

          'Easton, I woke up one morning and cancer had won its lifelong duel with me, but still, I woke up, life is weird.' 

          I'm taken aback by how easily she speaks about her death. Two days in and I'm still not used to it.

          'Well, I followed a man here.'

          'Creepy, but go on,' she says.

          I detail my experiences to the girl with the pink hair. She listens attentively, glancing over my shoulder when I tell her about the starbright man. I don't know if I imagine it, but as I say the word 'starbright', I feel a prickle on my neck, some contact from an unknown force on the air. I shudder. 

          'Well this sounds like a mystery for Elle and Easton,' she says, after not much deliberation. 'I've changed my mind, we solve mysteries now.'

‘What, so you’ll just help me?’ I ask, moving double step to catch up to her. She’s already steps ahead, moving down the street. ‘Just like that, weren’t you doing something?’

‘Well yeah,’ she replies, cocking her head to the side. ‘We’re always doing something, but some things are more interesting than other things. Life would be one dull long river if we stayed doing the same thing forever.’

I walk beside her, matching her steps. I don’t even know where we’re going. Still I walk with her, feeding off of her confidence.

‘Now I was going to Vatican City. I could have transported myself up to the top of the Basilica, see the view. But where’s the fun in that? I walk places so I can get distracted. That way I know when pretty strangers come tumbling out of hotels, adventure written all over them, I can throw caution to the wind.’

‘I have a girlfriend,’ I say instinctively.

She looks at me, brow crinkled. ‘Good for you, human cannonball.’

‘I, just, you called me pretty?’

‘I made an observation, I didn’t throw myself on the pavement and sigh ‘take me’,’ she throws a hand up over her forehead like a swooning maiden in a book from the eighteenth century.

‘Oh, right,’ I say. We walk in silence for a few seconds. Elle seems quite content to, looking up and down at the beautiful yellow stone buildings either side of us. She’s wearing a pretty summery dress, with big boots that don’t match. I wonder how she died of cancer dressed like that.

‘Go on then loverboy,’ she says, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘What’s she like, you’re obviously dying to tell me.’

‘She’s –‘ I pause. I’m a little nervous all of a sudden. I don’t really talk about my feelings. Especially not to someone I just met. ‘We died in a car crash together.’

‘Where is she?’ Elle asks.

‘I’ve been trying to find her for two days now, ever since it happened. I’ve met a few…interesting characters along the way.’

‘Why thank you,’ she says. ‘A guy who knows how to woo a lady.’

I look down at my shoes. She punches my arm.

‘Lighten up, Easton,’ she says. ‘I’m not after another gal’s man.’

‘Where would you go?’ I ask. ‘If you died with your boyfriend and you got split up.’ It was a long shot, we’re different people. Who’s to say we’d have ever gone to the same place.

She thinks about it for a moment. ‘Somewhere where I’d be easy to find,’ she says. ‘But I’m sure you thought of that already.’

I nod, then turn to her. ‘Where are we going, Elle?’

               ‘What, you don’t know?’ she says, genuinely shocked.

                ‘Well, no, I was following you!’

                ‘Oh, I was following you,’ she replies. ‘I have to say, Easton, our crime fighting days aren’t off to a great start.’

                ‘Well – I –‘ I don’t quite know what to say.

                ‘He’s your starbright man,’ she says. ‘Have a think, how might this have happened? That’d be a good place to start. I mean, people don’t just fall off the face of the earth.’

                ‘Well, he had this device,’ I reply. ‘Like a remote control, only a lot more complicated.’

                ‘How complicated?’ she asks. ‘On a scale of 1 to 90s VCR.’

                I stop, letting out an embarrassing snort. In a lot of ways she reminds me of Penny. She makes me laugh.

                ‘Pretty 90s,’ I confirm. ‘It looked like it was cobbled together. I can only assume that he’s found a way to cross over, become like us.’

                ‘What, like a death remote?’ she suggests. ‘Unless…maybe we’re not really dead. Maybe we’re something else. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really felt dead. I mean, this is a personal thing, but I feel a whole lot better now than I did when I was alive.’

                I have an idea, I wonder if she’s discovered it yet. ‘Can you close your eyes and sense everyone?’ I realise how strange it would sound if she didn’t know. Luckily, her face lights up.

                ‘Yeah! That’s how I woke up. It was like I was tuned in to the world.’

                ‘So, you didn’t fall into the Edge?’

                ‘The Edge?’ she asks. ‘What’s that? Sounds awesome.

                I wave my hand in front of me. ‘Depends on your definition of awesome? I thought that’s where everyone went first? It feels like falling, like you’ll never stop, and you see all your memories flying past like they’re windows you can step through.’

                ‘Not ringing any bells,’ she says. ‘Then, I have a lot of memories I don’t want to see again.’

                Maybe it does work like that, maybe our bodies know how much of our lives we want to see. Or if we need to. People like Elle, with heads full of chemo sessions, distraught parents, desperate times when death felt like a friend coming to visit, can’t, or won’t see the Edge. Is that better? To be cut off from all the happy times, no matter how few?

                ‘I like my loved ones alive,’ she nods her head, as though confirming it for both of us.

‘I always think that connection exists in life too,’ she says, clearly determined to change the subject. ‘It has to or it wouldn’t be there in the first place.’

            ‘What do you mean?’ I ask. I’ve never thought of it like that. I’ve always just associated the ability with being dead.

            ‘Well sometimes you have a connection with people don’t you,’ she says. ‘Parents and children. Partners, twins. How many times have you heard someone say ‘a mother knows’ or something equally clichéd.’

            ‘So you think the link is a physical thing?’ I get excited. ‘It’s what I was thinking, I was in this pub, Finnegan’s down the road, and they have this band on. The music…’

            ‘You can see it,’ she finishes.

            ‘Like a wave,’ I continue, ‘or a signal. It’s like every person on earth emits a signal when they die.’

            ‘But not when they’re alive,’ Elle says. Then looks confused as though she’s hit a dead end.

            ‘Maybe bodies block it,’ I suggest. ‘Like a mirror that bounces it back, or lead lining.’

            ‘You’re a science boy,’ she says, sounding impressed. ‘I could never get the hang of it at school, when I went anyway.’

            ‘I love it,’ I say, not the least bit sheepish. ‘It’s like unlocking the secrets of the universe.’

            ‘Not at my school it wasn’t,’ Elle says, laughing.

            ‘Still,’ I say, ‘I had my eyes closed when I saw the man. He exists in that other place. It’s like he’s just become signal and nothing else.’

            ‘You’re assuming it’s the man you followed,’ Elle says. ‘He lead you here, but what if he was leading you into a trap.’

            I shake my head. ‘It’s him,’ I say. ‘I know it’s him, he’s messing around with the universe, with his molecules. I say starbright man because it was like looking into a star, or an atomic explosion. If he’s messing around with his atoms, disappearing through buses, then I think it’s gone wrong.’

            ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘That’s very clever and all, but in a mystery story, it’s never the obvious answer.’ She taps her nose, hand on her hip.

            ‘Maybe,’ I say, smiling. ‘I have to say, I’ve always wanted a sidekick.’

            ‘Sidekick?’ she says, feigning offence. ‘Every crime fighting duo ever has the brainy one as the sidekick. You work things out, I’ll be brave and awesome and kick the starbright man in the face when it comes to it.’ She starts walking away, still not knowing where she’s going. She looks back, shaking her head. ‘Sidekick!’