Box Set - Chapter Fifteen

‘Did you know that there are points around the globe, veritably alive with electromagnetism?’ Teague says, twisting dials on his remote. ‘I discovered a long time ago that…ghosts as you call them flock to them like they truly possess magnetic properties and you’re all made of iron.’

‘I thought you weren’t monologueing,’ I reply. It doesn’t hurt being hung in the air, it’s just quite a peculiar feeling. The thing I don’t like is not being able to move. I feel trapped. My chance is to annoy him, so that he hopefully makes a mistake and lets me go. I close my eyes, trying to travel, anywhere but here.

‘I told you, you can’t do that,’he boasts. ‘You figured out that you’re now constructed mostly from protons,’he explains. ‘And that you can make yourself visible by changing the charge of the air. I’ve changed the charge again.’ He waves the remote. ‘Though my power sources is a little bit stronger than the mains. You can’t travel, you can’t even move.’

I close my eyes, apparently in defeat. I try to reach out. My fingers prickle. I try very hard not to smile. That power remains mine. I reach out to him and find he’s solid again. I can’t read his feelings. I can imagine he’d shine triumphant. Does this mean he doesn’t know about the Edge?

I open my eyes again, I don’t want to make it obvious. If I have something he doesn’t know about I have to use it to my advantage.

‘How are we connected? The hand I touched in Rome?’

‘Spot on,’ compliments Teague like a teacher. His eyes are very bloodshot, and the beard on his chin has grown scraggly, tiny brown hairs are beginning to skew off, randomly. Not that he seems to care. His clothes look unwashed. He must be hot in that coat, despite the wind up here. He looks like a desperate man with the gift of control.

‘Why does it matter?’ I ask. ‘It’s hurting you isn’t it.’

Teague’s eyes narrow. I’ve hit the nail on the head.

‘It’s none of your business what the connection does,’ he snaps. ‘What matters is you saw something shiny and you touched it, like a magpie, like a…child.’ He finishes like the idea repulses him. ‘It won’t take long to reverse, I just want to get you out of my hair.’

He turns a dial. I feel a prickle, but not like the Edge. It’s like a thousand needles digging into my skin.

I wince as the feeling spreads from the tips of my fingers and toes, up my arms and legs and into my chest.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

‘Dispersing,’ he replies. ‘You’ll still exist, but in another form.’

Dispersing. That sounds awful. I can only imagine what he’s doing and I know I have to stop him. There is no way to get rid of the connection so he’s going to get rid of me instead. I can imagine that in his twisted head it’s not even murder. I’m already dead.

He twists a dial and the invisible needles dig in deeper.

My eyes are already closed. I do what’s instinctive to me. I try to escape. This time the prickle of the Edge comes even easier, as though it’s telling me that’s where I need to go. I don’t have much else to choose from.

I reach out and try to step forward. This time I feel my leg move, but I know I’m not really moving at all.

‘Wait, what are you doing?’Teague sounds even more desperate. It works. The Edge disrupts his experiment.

I step forward and take my body with me. I fall into the Edge and for the first time, see it as somewhere safe.

I fall, but this time I feel controlled. The memories flick past but I can identify each one. There’s the day Dad bought an old Jaguar E-Type and Mum actually left him for a day. There’s the day me and Dad crashed in his secret Jaguar E-Type. I fall, fall fall, and I realise I’m seeing memories I’ve experienced since I’ve been dead. There’s Elle, and Graham and Yates, the blinding explosion of Teague in Graham’s basement. If that’s not proof I’m still alive then I don’t know what is.

I pick a memory at random as the motion of falling starts to make me feel ill.

My feet land on solid ground. The polished floors of my St Bartholomew’s. My old maths classroom sits on my left, and windows line the right hand wall. I remember looking out at the woods every single maths lesson wishing I could be out there and not stuck inside. I love maths, I can do maths. Maths and Physics go hand in hand, but sometimes I just wanted to be outside discovering things with them, not sat inside on a computer. The contradiction was that’s where all discoveries were in the real world. Hard work doesn’t come with adventure.

I look inside the classroom and there I am, about three years ago looking bored stiff. And there’s Penny, just two rows in front. I walk to the window on the door and look inside. I miss her. Everything that’s happening occupies me so I don’t think about it but I miss her whenever I get a moment’s peace. I hope she’s found friends too.

I put my hand on the window, meaning to go inside, but a sound to my left stops me.

I turn and there he is, just as wild looking.

‘How did you do this? How are you travelling? It’s impossible.’

‘Science gets proven wrong every day, Teague, I guess I just stepped on yours.’

He snarls at me like a wild animal. Is that the hint of a rash beneath his collar?

I turn and run, my feet slapping against the floor. I hear him tear after me. His feet are heavy and sound erratic like he’s losing control.

It doesn’t take long for me to reach the edge of the memory. The blackness engulfs me and I leap forward, letting it embrace me. I’m falling again, but not for long. I re-enter the world, on a grassy hill.

I stumble slightly but I carry on running. The ground is dry and hard in the height of summer. I only have vague recollections of this day. My mum and dad sit about a hundred metres to my right on a picnic blanket. I sit beside them. I’m about seven or eight and I look content playing with some dinosaurs.

I don’t really know what my plan is. I didn’t realise he was going to follow me. I whip past trees and over beds of flowers. I remember this place, there’s a big manor house that got converted into a museum years ago and my parents always loved coming here with me. They called it their ‘weekend place’.

I’m about to stop and try to travel again when Teague appears on the hillside. He trips over and it gives me the chance. The problem with such an open space is that I remember too much of it. Everything we ever see is preserved in our memories. We don’t realise it half the time. This means that the edge of this one will be far away or behind a thick bank of foliage.

I have to escape him.

I see a thick line of fir trees. They’re not big, I imagine they grow them so they can have their pick of Christmas trees, but where me and my family are sitting, they can’t see behind them.

I make for them. I realise that while I pant and feel a tightness in my chest, I have no desire to stop. I’m not getting tired. I use this to my advantage and dive behind the trees as Teague starts to get close. I dive and keep on falling into the Edge.

I feel his fingers drag against my ankle but then they’re gone. I hate not understanding things. The fact that I don’t know what will happen if I just carry on falling drives me to the point of madness every time I see this place. I also don’t know what will happen if I travel out of here and leave Teague behind. He’ll be trapped in my memories and god only knows what he could do to me. He can’t change them, my experience with Yates taught me that, but still, he’d be inside my subconscious. If we’re getting out of here, I’m taking him with me and then leaving him.

I re-enter a random memory. I instantly regret it. The beige carpet, the big sofa, the film I didn’t like on the television are all too familiar. I realise my heart is pounding. I’m scared and it lead me here.

I see myself on the sofa with a girl. I look away but it’s hard to. I can’t look anywhere else. She’s kissing me and I don’t want to kiss her. Everything she ever said to me comes rushing back. This is my worst memory. It’s not terrible, it’s not life-ending or something that means I need therapy, but Isobel was horrible to me. We do silly things when we feel lonely and that’s why I decided to go around her house so much. To sit and let her insult me and call me pathetic and say my dreams weren’t valid.

Her too-long blonde hair is falling over my face and I remembering it tickling. I want to leave, but Teague’s already there. I don’t want him to see this.

I turn but he grabs my arm. He looks to the image before him. He smirks and looks back to me.

‘I can feel how scared you are,’he says. ‘Do you realise how long it took me to do all the research, all the work to get me to this point? And you come along and try to throw it all down the drain.’

‘Look,’ I say, tearing my arm from his grasp. He has no control over me here. ‘Don’t think I’m scared of you for a second.’

‘Take me out of here,’ Teague commands. ‘Now.’

‘You can’t tell me to do anything,’ I reply. ‘You can’t hurt me in here.’

He shakes his head. ‘So arrogant. Don’t you realise that I’m doing important work.’

‘And my life isn’t important to you?’ I reply. ‘Why else would you research into the dead if that wasn’t important.’

‘Because the discovery outweighs the means,’ he snaps. ‘Don’t you realise how monumental this is? How much I’ve done for science, for the world. I can’t stay connected to someone who’s passed.’

‘So your life outweighs mine, that’s what you’re saying?’

He puts his hand to his forehead like a headache’s sprung from nowhere. ‘Dead? What is dead? You shouldn’t be afraid of what comes next? I’m doing you a favour!’

‘You’ve got a severely twisted view of the world if that’s your idea of a favour.’

Teague looks at me and for the first time I see some truth in his gaze. No malevolence, no malice, no desperation. It’s like he’s sorry for me.

‘We all move on,’ he says. ‘We all end up the same. The world isn’t full of spirits. They go somewhere else in the end.’

I hadn’t expected him to say that. Something I’d thought myself not long ago. But then he’s in my memories. How much of me does he know? He knows I’m a scientist, so he plays to my love of knowledge. He knows I doubt and question everything I come across, so now he brings that up.

‘But I’m not ready,’ I say. And the scene changes. There’s no Edge this time. One second we stand in Isobel’s living room, the waves of my anxiety breaking beside us. The next we’re on Kingston high street. Night has fallen, and me and Penny walk home together after one of our many trips to the cinema there. The cold of the evening bites at my exposed neck but I’m glad to leave the stifling warmth of Isobel’s living room. I welcome the cold, and the silence of a town past 10.

‘Oh of course.’ He sighs. ‘A girl, a man, a wife, a husband, an attachment that keeps you here. I understand, believe me, I do, but what comes next is better for everyone.’

‘How do you know that?’ I snap, tearing my eyes away from myself and my girlfriend. We’re laughing. The sad thing is, I can’t remember what we laughed about.

If I’ve learnt anything so far, it would be to appreciate the tiny moments you never think you need to remember. I want to know what we laughed about that day, because those days are the ones you forget, yet the bad ones stick out like beacons, dragging us towards them letting us dwell on them forever. I wish I could forget the bad days, that day on the sofa, and the day I died.

‘I know because I’ve made it my life’s work to know,’ he says. ‘I know that there is something afterwards.’

‘And how can you prove that, exactly?’ I demand. ‘The mysterious Teague clicks his fingers and I fly away into nothing. Do you understand what you’re asking? I died three days ago and now you’re asking me to die all over again when I find out that life goes on.’

‘But I’m dying!’ Teague says.‘Our connection is…unnatural.’ He takes a second to choose his words. ‘The dead and the living are not supposed to come together like this. When you touched the handprint on the wall, you brought death to me, you put me in a state that I can’t reverse.’

‘And that’s my fault? My first impression of you nearly blew a hole in the earth, you’ll forgive me for not trusting your scientific judgement.’

‘I don’t want to die,’ he says.‘I have knowledge to offer the world…’

‘And so might I have before I died, before everything was taken from me,’ I interrupt. ‘How do you know what I was going to go on to do? You can’t just weigh people’s importance like that.’

Teague crosses his arms. Defeated but opening the floor to me.

‘Well then,’ he says. He sounds agitated, like a petulant child has ruined his day. ‘What do you suggest we do?’

‘We find another way,’ I say. ‘I don’t want this connection any more than you. If you ask me you should be locked away. You’ve put people in danger and if it wasn’t for a rich boy in a basement you’d have hurt them.’

I grab his hand. ‘I just hope we can find them again.’