We’re back in Yates’s hayfield in
less than a second. Elle spins on the spot, raking her fingers through her pink
locks.
‘How did that happen, Easton?’she
asks, her voice sounding strangled.
‘I-I don’t know,’ I stammer. ‘It
must have been the light in there, the halogen bulbs, I guess they reacted with
us?’
‘But why’s it never happened
before?’
‘How many ghosts go to police
stations?’ I reply. ‘We’re a little unusual, Elle you have to admit.’
Her eyes shine and I know she’s
inches from the memory of tears.
Graham and Yates pass through the
door. ‘You two were on TV!’ Graham erupts before taking stock of the situation.
‘Conspiracy theorists will be going nuts! I have to get online.’
‘Because that’s all you care about?’
Elle says.
Graham runs several accounts online.
I wonder how many people on forums and just randomers from social media have
been ghosts. Those anonymous posters with no picture but a constant presence.
‘What’s up with her?’ Graham says,
jerking his thumb in Elle’s direction.
I open my mouth but she interjects
before I can utter a sound.
‘Because I’m dead, idiot,’ she says.
‘I died. Died. I lived a life and it
was stolen from me by a couple of bastard cells and people were upset about it.
Do you know what that feels like? Do you know how many times I went to visit my
parents after I died? How many times I sat with them?’
‘Elle,’ I say, putting a hand on her
forearm, the one she viciously waves at Graham who looks like a kid caught in
the act.
‘No, Easton,’ she says. ‘People die
and break hearts. You chose to cross over like it was a game and broke your
parent’s hearts. They don’t even know you are dead, could you take your tongue
out of Yates’s mouth for two seconds and consider what that kind of worry even
feels like?’
‘Oh so you’re against our
relationship?’ Graham says, putting his arm around Yates’s shoulders. Yates,
thankfully, shrugs it off and takes a step back.
‘Don’t you dare deflect,’ she says.
‘I am so happy for Yates. You can do whatever you like as far as I’m concerned.
My problem lies with your attitude to life. Life is precious and you’ve pissed
yours up the wall because you feel like it.’ She pauses, taking a deep, shaky
breath. ‘Somewhere out there, my parents will see an image of the daughter they
once had on television, and it will break their hearts all over again.’
She turns around and storms towards
the house, I presume so Graham won’t see her cry.
‘I didn’t mean to…’ Graham starts,
but his words fall away and he just starts gaping like a confused fish.
‘No, you never do,’ says Yates. He
follows Elle into the house.
I can’t be bothered saying a thing
to him so I turn my back on Graham and go inside too.
My head feels like it’s full of
static and it dawns on me that Elle’s right. If those pictures are on
television, then my own parents will see them. I can’t imagine how they’d feel.
What would they even think? That I’d run away and left them? But my body was in
the morgue. Would they think it was a hoax?
I assume Elle’s gone to her room
upstairs. Yates has followed her. I sit down on a chair in the living room. And
there it is, the image of me and Elle, slightly blurred but unmistakably us,
shimmering under the harsh light in the police station.
There’s a knock at the door.
I almost jump a foot into the air.
Previous to my death, a knock at the door would never have elicited such a
reaction, but we’re dead. People don’t knock at doors. Unless it’s Graham,
being hideously coy and apologetic again.
I get to my feet and go to open in,
ready to clip him round the ear.
I grasp the latch and wrench it
open. The person on the doorstep isn’t Graham.
‘Easton,’ she says. ‘I’m
Windermere.’
‘Hello,’ I say. ‘You are aware
that’s a lake.’ I cringe internally. She’s tall and brunette with a heart
shaped face and sharp features. She wears a long beige trench coat and a shirt
and trousers underneath. I don’t have to close my eyes to understand she’s
dead.
‘Yes, I am aware of that,’ she says.
‘May I come in?’
‘Erm, it’s not really my house,’I
say. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m here to talk with you and Elle
about the appearance you made at the police station in New York. We’ve been
looking for you for a while. After the whole thing with Teague.’
‘Wait, you know about him?’
‘Know about him? We’ve had him in
custody for four months. He almost blew up Dublin port.’
I start. She knows about Teague, and
his quest to remain the world’s worst scientist has continued.
‘Custody?’ I say. ‘Are you the ghost
police?’ The corners of my mouth twitch at the absurdity. I glance over her
shoulder and I realise Graham’s gone. Spooked most likely by the arrival of the
tall woman.
‘I’d better come inside,’ she says.
‘We have a lot to talk about.’
I let Windermere inside. She walks
with the confidence of a woman who belongs anywhere she goes. She gazes at the
endless piles of books in the hallway with an unreadable expression on her
face. Awe? Confusion?
‘How do you know about Teague?’
‘It’s hard not to know when you get
someone so noisy.’
‘What do you mean noisy?’
‘Well, the man’s atoms nearly blew
up a house, I don’t know how much more noisy you can get. It’s rare that
spirits can cause devastation on both plains.’
‘How do you know all this?’ I ask.
‘We’re human,’ Windermere explains.
‘Did you really think that of everyone who’s ever died in history, no one would
continue to research why we stayed this way.’
‘Have you found out why?’ I ask.
‘It turns out, that humans are
particularly difficult to properly kill,’ Windermere says. ‘One part of us dies
and the most important bits live on.’
‘So is there a group of you?’ I ask.
‘A ghost government?’
Windermere laughs. ‘No, no. That
would be so difficult to control. There are groups of us. We collect together
and our numbers always change. I met a group of people a long time ago who
wanted to make sure people like Teague didn’t cause trouble. We studied the
spirit world, the shadows when you close your eyes, we’re in tune with it.
Someone like Teague explodes, we see it and we’re following him. We could never
quite catch up to you.’
‘Is that what you call it? The
spirit world?’ I say. ‘We call it the Edge.’
She smiles. The sort of smile where
you try something new and you like the feel of it. ‘The Edge. Not bad,’she
says.
There’s some movement on the stairs.
Elle and Yates appear and poke their heads around the corner.
‘Hello,’ says Elle. ‘Easton, who’s
this?’
‘Let me introduce Windermere,’ I
say, waving my hand. ‘Windermere, this is Elle and Yates.’
‘I know you all,’ Windermere says
with a nod. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’
‘You are aware that’s a lake,’Elle
says.
Windermere smiles, but it doesn’t last
long. She must get it all the time.
‘How do you know who we are?’Yates
asks.
Windermere quickly explains
everything she just explained to me. Elle’s eyebrows travel upwards until they
near her hairline.
‘You know I’ve always wondered,’she
says, as Windermere finishes. ‘If ghosts had collected together anyway. I guess
I was just unlucky.’
‘There are some of us that did,’
Windermere says. ‘It’s so hard to keep a track on people who are immaterial.’
‘Why are you here though?’ Yates
asks.
‘We’d better sit down,’ she says.
‘We’re not in trouble are we?’ I
ask.
‘Not trouble, no,’ Windermere says.
‘Come.’ She directs us towards the living room. We follow in a line like ducks
following their mother.
We sit down in a row on the sofa. I
can only imagine where Graham’s gone.
‘Basically we need you to come in,’
she says. ‘We need you to talk to Teague.’
‘What makes you think he’ll listen
to us?’ I ask. I have no great desire to ever see the man again.
‘We have to try,’ Windermere says.
‘There are some in my council who wants you to receive the same treatment. You
followed him around, causing trouble and bridging gaps between the living and
the dead. We generally discourage such things.’
‘Who’s we?’ Elle asks. ‘And we did
nothing wrong. Unless wrong is stopping a maniac. In which case you’re welcome
to string me up.’
I nod in unison. ‘We didn’t know
what we were doing, we thought we were doing good.’
‘You did do good,’ Windermere says.
‘But this side of the tracks, as it were, is seen as sacred by a lot of people.
Some of us see us a utopian society that doesn’t want to mix with the living.’
‘Any people who tend to segregate
themselves from others aren’t historically proven to be great company,’ Yates
observes.
Windermere smiles, like she’s
talking to a child. I wonder if she knows that Yates, for all his teenage
appearance, is actually well into his thirties.
‘Who are ‘we’?’ I explore. She’s
being very vague about some things and I’m not sure I like it.
‘The Council,’ she begins, ‘are a
group of scientists, academics and scholars who found each other a long time
ago. We’re not that hard to find, we tend to cluster around libraries.’ She
pauses, looking at Yates. ‘Another thing, we’d like the Thacker book back.’
‘What right do you have to it?’Yates
raises his voice, darting his eyes upwards to where the book is undoubtedly
stowed.
‘No more than you,’ she rebuts. ‘The Alchemist belongs to the living.
Thacker is something of a legend to us and though his annotations are vitally
important and help us understand a lot about the afterlife, we use his book in
conjunction with our rules. It stays in the Thacker museum.’
‘And who exactly makes these rules?’
I ask. ‘Do you put a vote out through the Edge or something.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ she
says.‘We’re a democracy, we show representation on all walks of life, age,
gender, sexuality. We decide on a vote that is representative of the
population.’
‘But it’s not the population,’Elle
says. ‘I don’t remember being asked.’
‘If you give us a way to do that
then be my guest,’ Windermere says. ‘The fact remains that we exist to stop
people like Teague, and to stop people from drawing attention to us from others
like him.’
Elle holds her hands up. She sits
back, not desiring to be snapped at again.
‘Look, Miss Windermere,’ I say,
attempting to find a voice of reason. ‘We’re just looking to live our
afterlives, we don’t want any part of this council. Or anything to do with
Teague. You do know he nearly killed me and my friend? I don’t ever want to see
him again.’
‘Of course, we understand that,
Easton,’ Windermere reasons. ‘But you might be the only one who can help us.
Just tell us how you stopped him before.’
‘Well it wasn’t exactly intended,’I
say.
‘Easton,’ Elle warns.
‘It’s alright,’ I say. ‘If I tell
her maybe they’ll leave us alone.’ I nod in Windermere’s direction, searching
for confirmation. Windermere dips her head in return.
‘I found him in Rome,’ I say. I
quickly explain my touching his handprint and the connection we shared. How I
was able to control him because he wanted an end to it.
Windermere nods. ‘And would you be
willing to undergo this connection again, in a controlled environment? We
recovered all the man’s equipment from the Hotel Fontana.’
‘Can’t someone else?’ I ask. ‘I can
show you how.’
‘We’d much rather it was you,’she
says.
‘Why?’
‘We have our reasons.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No way. Don’t try and
go all cloak and dagger on me just because you feel like it. If I do anything I
want to know why I’m doing it.’
Windermere sighs. ‘In that case, I’m
afraid I’m going to have to take you into custody,’ she says.
‘Oh yeah? How are you planning on
doing that? I don’t think handcuffs work on the dead,’ Yates says.
‘We don’t need handcuffs,’
Windermere says.
I feel it in my fingers first, a
sense of rigidity that spreads up my forearm and then across my chest.
‘We don’t want to have to do this,’
she says.
I find I can’t talk. My mouth snaps
shut and I feel as though I’ve been put under a body wide anaesthetic. I try to
close my eyes but I find I can’t even blink. My eyeballs begin to burn almost
instantly.
Windermere steps forwards and holds
me by the wrist. I can’t even feel what she’s doing anymore. My eyes are locked
to stare in one direction, all I can see is her head.
I hear footsteps and know that
someone else has joined us in the room.
They don’t share a word, but simply
disappear, taking us with them.
I view Windermere’s edge and find it
to be bright and open, each of her memories far away like oases in the distance
in a wide, flat desert.
I have no sense of anyone else
around me and I worry I’ve been split from my friends again.
We re-enter the waking world and I
have the feeling return to my body.
I immediately close my eyes and
attempt to travel. The four of us have a rule. If we’re ever separated, or we
ever find anyone who ever ‘does a Teague’ as we’ve come to call it. We’re to
instantly travel and meet in the entrance hall of the Tate Modern in London, a
random spot we all knew.
I close my eyes but nothing happens.
It’s like closing my eyes when I was alive again.
‘That won’t work here,’Windermere says.
‘We’ve learned a lot since we captured Teague.’
‘Aren’t you clever,’ I say. ‘I
refuse to help you, this is kidnap.’
‘This is necessary,’ Windermere
says.
I look around us and realise we’re
in a cell. The walls are made of huge grey flagstones like the inside of a
castle. There’s an opening on the far side but the door is just bars. A breeze
flows in and I feel a chill spread through my body.
‘Where are we?’ I ask.
‘An island in the north
sea,’Windermere says. ‘It’s long been abandoned so we adopted it as our home.’
‘Bit chilly isn’t it?’
‘Control of your body is the first
step,’ she says. ‘We are spirits, we don’t need to feel the cold.’
‘I like the cold,’ I
say. ‘It reminds me I’m alive.’
Windermere shakes her head and
smiles. ‘You’ll learn. Accepting your death opens so many doors, Easton. You’ll
thank me for this one day.’
She crosses to the door and opens
it. Removing an old key from her pocket she closes the door behind her and
locks it with the loud squeal of rusty metal on metal. The sound makes me grit
my teeth together.
‘I wouldn’t try travelling through
the door,’ she says. ‘It would be pointless. I’ll come back in an hour when
you’ve had time to think.’
She leaves and I realise I’m quite
alone. Of course I try to travel through the bars. I find they’re as solid as
they can be. I can put my arms through them but that’s it.
‘Hello?’ I cry. ‘Elle, Yates?’
The whistling wind is my only
response.
I cast around, looking for a way
out. The room contains the remains of a bed, a plank of wood held up by two
chains and some straw on the ground. They haven’t even granted me comforts. Her
words echo in my head. We don’t need to
feel the cold. But I do, I do every day. I wake up in the morning and feel
the warmth of a quilt on my back. After that I go outside and sit on the garden
chair. Every morning whatever the weather. I’ve sat with the sun on my back and
relished my lack of sunburn. I’ve felt the rain on my skin and a gale force
wind that refuses to knock me down. I am alive, I refuse to accept my death.
I close my eyes and reach out.
Thankfully, that power remains mine. I reach out and try to find Elle and
Yates. Their consciousnesses are so familiar to me now, I pick them out of the
crowd. Yates is on the floor below me and Elle above. The problem with the Edge
is that it shows me spirits, not where they are. I’m astounded by the amount of
people above me. High above us there is the bustle of hundreds of spirits
running back and forth live bees in a hive.
I realise how far away from us they
are and conclude that we’re being kept deep below the earth.
I close my eyes and
spread further. Come on, Graham. I
think.
