Box Set - Chapter Twenty-Seven

My reappearance at this starting point confirms one thing for me. I’m not alive. I’m dead but somewhere else. And if that’s true, it means I still have some control over myself here. If I’ve been stripped of all the powers I had, then what do I have left. If I’m dead, that means I can’t feel hunger or tiredness or heat. So the discomfort is an illusion. The same way that the skeleton in the well can’t have been real.

I’m reminded of being trapped in my memories with Teague. All I need to do is find a way out.

I start off into the desert again. The same thoughts run through my head at my command. I am dead. I can feel no heat. I feel no hunger or thirst. This place isn’t real.

Does that mean it’s constructed by Thacker? She said she wanted to know about the Great Beyond but how much can I trust her. And where are my friends? Are they in this desert somewhere? Or do they have worlds constructed just for them.

I bend to the ground. The hot sand runs through my fingers. It certainly feels real. I bat my fingers clean and rub my fingertips to let the sand out from under my fingernails. I walk in what I think is a different direction this time. Maybe there’ll be something else, another town or some form of civilisation.

I pant as I climb a sand dune. It’s hard to remind myself the place isn’t real when the ache sets into my chest.

I reach the crest and slide down the other side.

There. Low and behold, on the horizon is a patch of green in the sea of yellow. An oasis out here in the desert. I quicken my pace and do my best to ignore my limbs failing with the exertion. What feels like lactic acid builds in my thighs and my stomach. Part of me relishes it. For a year my limbs have been everlasting, not touched by the physicality of the world. This feels like waking up.

Before long, my tired feet step off the sand and onto a patch of cool grass. Excited, I flop to the ground and rip my shoes off. I make fists with my toes, tearing the grass out of the earth. It feels cool and wonderful. I laugh. Out here in the desert, dying of hunger and thirst, I laugh and I feel alive.

I crawl forwards, to the side of a clear, wide pool of water surrounded by palm trees. I dip my hands in and take deep gulps of fresh water. It’s ice cold and I’m not sure how or why. The discrepancy is easy to ignore and I continue drinking.

Soon enough I start to feel sick so I’m forced to stop.

I sit back and take stock of my new surroundings. The oasis solves my need for water but the question of food is still a bit one. As much as I try and convince myself I don’t need it, my stomach growls with the need for sustenance.

I feel quite helpless all of a sudden. I absent minded claw at the grass beside me. I feel a gust of wind. For a second it’s glorious. After a few seconds though, it picks up. The sand kicks up and blusters towards me.

I try to stand, but as soon as I do, I get buffeted in the face. I can’t stand the feeling of sand in my eyes and mouth so I splutter and hit the floor.

Staying close to the ground isn’t much respite. I cry out as it begins to howl around me and the sand blots out the sun.

I clasp my hands over my head and close my eyes, waiting for the desert to take me.

I hear the vultures before I open my eyes and I know I’ve returned. The sun, the tree, the sand, the birds. Every time I find something, the desert strikes out at me like a scorpion under attack.

I don’t understand. Is this what I’m to be subjected to forever, walking and finding a shred of hope, only to be returned to this starting point?

‘What do you want?’ I shout to no one.

‘What do any of us want?’ says a familiar voice.

I turn around and jerk back with shock. Benjamin sits there, in a brown suit and a cane. He sits at the red seat of a London bus stop, rising from the sand right where the tree had been.

‘Hello, Easton,’ he says with a smile.

‘What are you doing here?’

                I step back, startled and point my finger at him as though this simple act will protect me from harm. Usually sight of Benjamin wouldn’t scare me. I have memories of a hundred games of chess in Central Park. Here, in this unknown place, I know that the man isn’t Benjamin, so his resemblance sets an unease within me.

                ‘I’m here to help,’ he says.

                The voice sounds so much like him I’m almost fooled into believing it.

                I take a step towards the bus stop. In three more I’m by its side. I reach out and touch the pole showing bus times. It’s gritty to touch, like its stood here forever.

                ‘This can’t be real,’ I say. ‘None of it.’

                ‘This place is as real as you want it to be,’ Benjamin replies. ‘The same as the afterlife at any stage.’

                ‘What are you saying? That the whole of last year was in my head?’

                ‘Sit down with me, Easton.’ He pats the bench beside him.

                ‘What and the bus shelter collapses and I die? Or you pull a knife out of your cane and you stab me in the chest? I’ve not been here long but I get the gist. Things appear, I die. I’d rather stand here and be careful.’

                ‘What is dying?’ Benjamin muses. He digs into the sand with his cane, drawing a circle through the grains.

                ‘Don’t go all philosophical on me,’ I plead.

                ‘I’m not philosophical, I’m asking, what is dying?’

                ‘When your body gives up on life,’ I say. ‘When your organs stop functioning and your brain switches off.’

                ‘And let me ask you, as a spirit, do you have any of these things?’

                ‘Well I’m not very spiritual at the moment,’ I retort. ‘I’m hungry and thirsty and I don’t know why?’

                ‘Because you think you’re alive. As humans, we always have a choice. This place is a choice. It’s a choice between living, dying and staying stuck in the hell that lies between.’

                ‘So it’s purgatory?’

                Benjamin chuckles. ‘We do like adding labels to things don’t we. Purgatory or a purgatory of sorts must exist in the minds of men because very few of us are wholly good or completely evil. So we cannot justify us being fast-tracked to a heaven or hell. I’m not sure anyone knows what this place truly is, but the ones who stay here are the ones who are happy to exist at this eternal bus station, waiting for a bus that will never come and take them away.’

                ‘Why won’t they?’ I ask. ‘I know I don’t want to stay here forever.’

                ‘Then you are a brave one,’ he replies. ‘Not all of us are so lucky. People fear the abyss. That place where we’re no one and no one knows us. Not existing is the epitome of the unknown. We all have that fear. I know you have it too.’

                ‘I do, but I also fear being stuck, like this place. Why do I keep dying?’

                ‘Because you believe this place can hurt you.’

                I consider the possibility. Is it plausible that I could stroll through this desert as though I were a spirit? Despite how hungry I am, and the thirst, and the burn of the sun on the back of my neck, could I really just walk on? Impervious to everything that could harm me? The idea reminds me of Windermere, and here ghosts who feel no pain. I swore not to be like them, to cling to the ounce of life I’d been allowed to retain.

                ‘But is life the ability to feel pain?’

                ‘You’re reading my thoughts,’ I notice. ‘How did you do that?’

                Benjamin holds his hands out as if I should already know the answer.

                ‘You’re me?’ I suggest. ‘I’ve created you with my mind? Maybe the heat has got to me.’

                ‘Consider that I am part of you, how does that explain my knowing facts about this place? You’re clever, Easton, but not psychic.’

                I look into his smiling brown eyes. I should know the answer, it’s staring me in the face but I can’t get there. It is very hot.

                ‘I’ve connected with you,’ he explains. ‘Benjamin was the man who helped you when you left the world of the living, so that’s the image your mind has made me. You can’t see me if you’ve never seen me before. Yet I’m here so your mind fills in the blanks.’

                ‘So you’re here but you’re not here,’ I say. ‘Wonderful.’

                ‘I can’t be there in person because this world won’t allow it, you are in a state of flux because you haven’t chosen to come over yet. All I can do is offer you the options.’

                ‘If I cross over to you, can I come back? Will I see my world again?’

                ‘That, I cannot tell you.’ He sighs. ‘I am one of those who stayed. Rooted to the ground by fear of the leap of faith. People have left us here but I can’t say where they went. If they went onto something better, or they fell into that dark abyss.’

                ‘Are my friends there with you?’

                ‘If you could see how many stay in these doldrums, you’d understand why I couldn’t answer that.’

                I look at the man who’s only half here. I have to go, surely? I have to learn more about this new place, these doldrums, or else I’ll be stuck in this place forever, drowning in the heat of a never setting sun.

                ‘How do I cross?’ I ask, coming to a decision. ‘I can’t stay here. I have to find my friends.’

                ‘It’s quite simple,’ he says. ‘You can close your eyes and open them at our front gate.’

                ‘I haven’t been able to do that since I came here,’ I say.

                ‘It’s the trick of this world,’ he explains. ‘There is no anchor, nothing to remind you of where you are, only that tree. The dead tree where we all start. Our mind tries to escape, creates paths and small moments of salvation, but with every try, your world shrinks. The edges of the map close around you.’

                ‘Then what anchors me? How do I find you?’

                ‘You’ll know it when you find it,’ he says and he smiles. ‘When you find it, hold on tight and don’t let go.’

                And he’s gone before I can say another word and the bus stop along with him.

                The desert suddenly appears to have raised some degrees. Maybe it can sense my escape and will put up a last fight to keep me.

                I begin to feel the winds of an approaching sandstorm again. I panic and can only see the dead tree. I walk around it, searching the horizon for some sign. A town, a tower, a tree blooming with life, anything that could signify an end to this misery.

                That’s when I hear it. A low rumbling. At first I think it’s a swarm of locusts, come to fly over me and pick my bones clean like a stalk of grain. I look for shelter and can’t see any. I try to remember which direction the town with the well was, but every direction looks the same.

                Then, the low rumble changes pitch and returns again. It’s a low note, changing and then returning to the base line. It’s music.

                People are singing. Low voices. Another set of voices join them in harmony. I can’t make out what language they’re singing in, but the untold beauty of their voices combined together settles me.

                The wind picks up. With it I can feel grains of sand flicking around my skin and threatening to blind me.

                I close my eyes and listen to the music. The resonance of their voices flows through me. I can feel the music. The vibrations course through me, and then I can see them, like waves and fireworks and explosions in the blackness behind my eyes.

                ‘I can see you!’ The words escape my mouth before I can stop them. I laugh and spread my arms out. The waves become clearer and I feel a pull as I’m caught between them. I’m in a riptide and I’m happy to let it carry me away.

                This time I don’t open my eyes. The world comes into focus from the blackness. The waves become lines and in them is a crowd of people. A thousand heads look at me, and soon my eyes begin to water. I blink and the new world comes into focus. A new world born of music and the edge of darkness when I close my eyes.