Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 64

          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.'

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 63

                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.’

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 62

               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.

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 61

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.

Box Set - Chapter Eight

            I stand in a cell with my hands over my ears. The screams are unbearable. Penny’s travel guide is clasped in my hand and I cannot concentrate to move. I am trapped in a room. The door is a set of bars and the walls crumble with yellow stone.

            My hand flies out to find some sort of purchase. The sounds are so loud, I can’t even fall to the Edge, travel to another place. I don’t need to close my eyes to hear the dead, because they exist all around me.

            I can feel them pressed against each other, writhing and crying, screaming and shouting for parents and loved ones long, long dead.

            I fall to my knees. I feel the sharp grain of the sand through my jeans and wish it would stop.

            I open my eyes by my vision swims.

            I have to get away, far away from this place so I can’t hear it anymore.

            I look up and the sun blinds me, directly overhead, like a lighthouse shining down on me.

            I stagger over to the bars of the door. Surely that will be easier. The bars are rough and rusty to touch, old metal flakes off to my touch and I push against them. The screams are louder here. Pushed up against the bars.

            I grit my teeth and push with all my might. Rattling the metal in front of me. I push, push, push until I feel the purchase in the atoms of the iron. I pass through and I’m in a corridor.

            I take off to the right, hands still over my ears, the travel guide pressed to the side of my face.

            So many people died here, this is a terrible place, a place of horror and death and blood and gore and I have to get away.

            I turn corner after corner. The place is a maze and every time I come to a dead end, the sound amplifies, like I’ve walked right into a speaker.

            I turn a final corner and cry out, seeing my exit, a modern door set into the wall of the old structure. I close my eyes and barrel towards it, trusting my body to take me through.

            I feel the pinch of travelling through and I travel further, the sweet relief of a layer of stone between me and the unending screams.

            I feel another pinch and then another, this one much longer, like I’m holding my breath underwater. Then the air outside. The ground is still grainy but out here it’s quiet.

            I run and run until my legs give out. From the floor with my breath catching in my throat, I look back on the place of horror I’ve just escaped from.
The squat, yet tall cylindrical building is unmistakable. I’ve arrived in the right place.

                The Colosseum towers above me. Just as the picture in Penny’s guidebook suggests, the top right section is missing, like a giant has stooped down and taken a big bite out of the stone.

                I climb to my feet and put a hand on each knee for support. I can still hear them. The screams inside the building. I realise how many people must have died in that arena. There must be thousands of spirits, thousands of years old who just stay in the place, because the terror won’t let them leave. I felt it myself, like an anchor rooting me to the spot. The claws of a thousand terrified human beings.

                I wonder if you feel it when you’re alive. You can’t hear it of course, but I wonder; if you stand in the queue, waiting to be charged entry, can you feel the pressure of all the lost life hanging in the air. Or even at night, if you were brave enough to break in, would you hear an echo, a footstep and blame it on a trick of your overactive imagination.

                Some places are drenched in human blood. They must act like sponges for human souls.

                I flick open Penny’s guidebook and turn to the page on the Colosseum. I read:

                Underneath the arena floor, now visible from above, there were a series of interconnecting access tunnels, meaning gladiators and dangerous creatures such as lions and tigers could be placed into the arena from underneath using lifts and pulleys. The arena was sometimes also used to stage sea battles. The arena would be filled with thousands of gallons of water, and two opposing ships would wage war…

                Penny had underlined the whole section in green pen. She must have thought it was cool. I can imagine her standing here, seeing the scene in ancient Rome. She’d loved knowing about ancient  history. There wasn’t a myth or legend under the sun she didn’t know; something she only ever shared with me. She even used to write her own stories about gods and monsters when she was little. The ones she knew just weren’t enough.

                At least I know where I ended up. In a cell used to keep gladiators before they were sent to their deaths. I had no way of knowing where I’d emerge. It was a danger of travelling by picture not memory.
 It’s strange to think that as different as we are in life, in death we are all connected by the same things. The abilities we gain, the things we lose, the ever present threat of the Edge. I am the same as those thousands of people in the Colosseum. I can close my eyes, reach out to them and know what they’re feeling in the here and now.

                We spend our lives labelling each other, black, white, gay, straight, woman, man, but when it comes down to it, as your spirit leaves your body does any of that matter? At our base, we are one and the same. What does it matter who you love or what colour your skin is when you can both be trapped inside yourself, unable to escape.

                It makes me want to get a can of red paint and write on the wall of the Colosseum, a message to all the haters reminding them what’s important. I dread to think how many spirits live on after death, still affected by the hate they experienced in life; just like Yates. This is a sad place, and the horror of its history lives on, and it’s been packaged and sold for people to stare at.

                Who ever said time is a healer really hadn’t been hurt that much. Tell that to the Gladiators, tell that to Holocaust victims.

                I turn away, knowing my Penny won’t have stayed here.

                The urge to help someone is greater than before. I know I did nothing wrong in my life, nothing unspeakable, but being connected to these people, screaming for eternity, makes me feel a guilt that I can’t escape, because I lived a relatively happy life.

                So as I turn away, I walk with the desire to help.

                I know Penny will want to do the same. I try to ignore the nagging doubt clawing its way forward in my mind. The doubt that tells me that I’ll never be able to find her.

                I sit down on the kerb, looking back at the building. What can I do? There must be a way. Why didn’t we plan for this? If we ever die, meet at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentines Day. In true romantic style. But we have no such plan. There are a thousand places Penny could be.

                What even do I do with myself? I am free from the restraints of life. I don’t have to go to college or get a job, go to university or do anything that could be considered stressful.

                But if I can’t do that, and I can’t do anything else, what do I have left?
 I can travel. The answer comes to me, swimming through the mist. The world is mine to see and I can appear anywhere I want in an instant, based on whim or something stronger.

                Tears pool in the corners of my eyes. Of course I’ll stick to the places Penny would have wanted to see. I think I’d subconsciously gravitate to them anyway. Maybe that means the search isn’t over though. Maybe the world will pull us back together. Isn’t that what people say? The person you’re meant to be with will find you in the end. I think I have to trust that.

                I set off down the street, ridding myself of the tears that attempt to take me over.

                I walk for a while, taking in the sights that surround me. A fact that occurs to me as I walk around the city: Rome is big. Everything is big.

                You can be walking down the narrowest street, taking in the beautiful architecture, the cobbles, the high quality of clothing everyone decides to wear, turn a corner and be stood in front of the world’s biggest church, or most impressive fountain, or gargantuan temple.

                I use Penny’s guidebook to take me round the city. I decide to head for the Capitol Building as the book suggests it contains a museum. A consistent fact of my life that I have always been unable to shake, is that I’m a sucker for a museum.

                The sun is bright and the air is cool as I continue my solo walking tour. I flick through the guidebook as I go, reading Penny’s annotations. There are so many underlined passages, and folded down pages. She must be here somewhere, this is her city. It’s strange how you can make a place yours, even without visiting. Some places take on romantic images in our heads. Oases of perfection in a world we don’t have the time or patience to fully explore.

                In the back of my mind, the cruel voice whispers. If she’s here, why didn’t she take her guidebook?

                Of course there are a thousand answers. Maybe she doesn’t know she can touch things yet. Maybe she’s committed it to memory.

                I push the thoughts from my mind. They’re not good for my worrisome brain.

                I turn a corner and smile. The sign says ‘Finnegan’s’ and the pub is most definitely Irish.

                The green inside me can’t resist and in duck inside, glad to have found a slice of myself in a foreign place.

The first thing I notice is the music. There’s a band on, playing a track I recognize; an Irish song called ‘Fisherman’s Waltz’, but sung in thick Italian accents. The marrying of two cultures is quite a sight to behold.

            I edge past a couple at a table, I see he’s coaxed the waitress down to sit with him.

            I decide to stand and watch the band through the gaps in the crowd. Naturally, I could pass through all of them and gain front row seats, but it’s not in my nature to cause discomfort.

            I close my eyes and reach out on a whim. The room appears in shadows. The feelings of the living are invisible to me, their innermost thoughts are guarded by layers of flesh and bone. I imagine that if I’m a signal, the denseness of their bodies distorts the wave, and bounces it back towards me.

            The music pulses towards me in the same way as Yates when I saw him through the door. The sound emerges from the guitars in jagged lines, cutting the air, the accordians are languid and easy going, easing the tense knot left by the Colosseum. The set of drums reverberates with a low vibration. I feel the sound shake me, from my toes, up to my chest, the same way that it would at a gig. I remember the countless times I’d seen my favourite bands. The moments the music became a part of me and flashes emerge from my memories, instances when the music and my soul walked hand in hand.

            And there, towards the edge of the room, is one more spirit. I walk towards him, the curiosity of my new discovery alighting my scientist’s brain. I want to know if this is something I share.

            I cross the room, stopping in front of him.

            ‘Hi,’ I venture.

            He explodes in a rapid foreign language, not Italian. He waves his arms to the side and I see I’m blocking his view. I start and stumble to my left. He dismisses me with a wave of the arm. I guess not all spirits are Benjamins.

            I’m about to turn back to the band when I see something. A man, and he’s staring. I turn and there’s no one behind me. I stare back, unsettled by him.

            He’s tall and wears a long moleskin coat. The hems are muddied and the sleeves turned up on account of the heat. His hair is long and wiry and really needs to be cut. His face would compliment it. His features are striking and jaw angular, and his grey eyes pierce me, unblinking.

            He is alive, and he can see me.

 There can be no doubt about it. His eyes bore into me. I’m rooted to the spot. But there is something in the stare: a whispering hint of threat.

            I’m staring back at him so intently, that when he makes a sudden movement, I fall back into the table behind me and have to catch myself. It rocks and drinks go flying. The music fans and patrons around it groan and start to blame each other. One pushes another and there is a domino effect around the room.

            The man doesn’t notice a thing. I can’t hear him over the music but the intense look on his face disappears and he jumps for joy. He raises his hand and I see a complicated piece of equipment in my hand, about the size of a remote control but with wires and complicated little gadgets sticking out here and there.

            He turns and starts out of the bar, moving more quickly than would otherwise be normal.

            I stand and move after him. He had seen me, I’m absolutely certain of it, and that means I have to catch him. If there’s a way of reaching my loved ones again, then I will find it. I had thought it impossible, it’s what we’re conditioned to think - the people that leave us are gone, they’re not coming back.

            But what if they’re not, what if I’m not. I don’t know how I’ll explain appearing to my parents in the middle of the living room. Surprise, your son’s a ghost! I will find a way though.

            I burst out into the sunlight, passing out of the noisy, crowded room and exchanging the music for the urban orchestra of the Roman streets.

            I cast around, whipping my head this way and that. He must be out here, he has to be.

            There he is, already at the end of the road. He must have sprinted away from the pub. Why’s he in such a hurry?

            I sprint myself, absent mindedly dodging a car as it turns towards me. Some human traits are hard to shake. I don’t think I’ll ever stop behaving like that. I want to live, not even death will stop me.

            I turn the corner he disappeared round and catch him again, halfway down the next street. I pump my arms, quickly losing my breath and stamina. I really should have worked out more in life. Then again, the call of science books was always too great for me to resist, not to mention the pull of the comic tradition.

            Without warning or cause for concern for his own self preservation, he stops in the middle of the road and turns, just as I see the tourbus barrel towards him.

‘No!’ I shout. I stop without meaning to. My subconscious must know that all hope is lost. My muscles fail, my hand stretches out.

            The man turns, and sees the big yellow bus looming over him. I can’t tear my eyes away. It’s like watching a horror movie. Or a film that will make you cry. You want to look away, but you carry on watching.

For as long as I remember I’ve been scared of smalls spaces. The feeling of being trapped is something that closes my throat, and brings a cold sweat to my brow. Of all the things in the world, that is what I think of now, I’d feel trapped in that split second before the bus hit me. It’s how I felt when the van came spinning towards my Triumph. My fists seized, my breath stopped.

He raises his fist and clamps his thumb down on a button at its base.

Inexplicably, the bus with a terrified looking driver, does not hit the man in the moleskin jacket. It reaches him and passes on. He travels through it like he was never there in the first place.

I watch in awe as the bus travels on. What do you do in that situation? Stop the bus and look at the no body on the road. That driver would be haunted for the rest of his life. He’d think it was a hallucination. I’m not altogether convinced it wasn’t myself.

The bus doesn’t stop. I watch the rear end with bated breath but he doesn’t reappear.

My legs find the ability to move again. I stumble at first, but quickly I find the ability to run.

I cross the street, ignoring the other cars this time and find the site of the almost death. A large, round scorch mark lies on the ground, as though it’s been there forever. And in the middle, a matchbook.

I stoop and pick it up. The man is nowhere to be seen.

On the front is a sight I know well from the guidebook. Lights, water, cherubs, gods and their steeds. One of the most beautiful places in Rome.

I read the name on the back: Hotel Fontana. I have my next destination.

I turn it over in my hand and something catches my eye inside. With an unexplained note of fear gripping my throat, I open it and read words inside, written in red pen.

‘I see you.’

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 60

            ‘No!’ I shout. I stop without meaning to. My subconscious must know that all hope is lost. My muscles fail, my hand stretches out.

            The man turns, and sees the big yellow bus looming over him. I can’t tear my eyes away. It’s like watching a horror movie. Or a film that will make you cry. You want to look away, but you carry on watching.

For as long as I remember I’ve been scared of smalls spaces. The feeling of being trapped is something that closes my throat, and brings a cold sweat to my brow. Of all the things in the world, that is what I think of now, I’d feel trapped in that split second before the bus hit me. It’s how I felt when the van came spinning towards my Triumph. My fists seized, my breath stopped.

He raises his fist and clamps his thumb down on a button at its base.

Inexplicably, the bus with a terrified looking driver, does not hit the man in the moleskin jacket. It reaches him and passes on. He travels through it like he was never there in the first place.

I watch in awe as the bus travels on. What do you do in that situation? Stop the bus and look at the no body on the road. That driver would be haunted for the rest of his life. He’d think it was a hallucination. I’m not altogether convinced it wasn’t myself.

The bus doesn’t stop. I watch the rear end with bated breath but he doesn’t reappear.

My legs find the ability to move again. I stumble at first, but quickly I find the ability to run.

I cross the street, ignoring the other cars this time and find the site of the almost death. A large, round scorch mark lies on the ground, as though it’s been there forever. And in the middle, a matchbook.

I stoop and pick it up. The man is nowhere to be seen.

On the front is a sight I know well from the guidebook. Lights, water, cherubs, gods and their steeds. One of the most beautiful places in Rome.

I read the name on the back: Hotel Fontana. I have my next destination.

I turn it over in my hand and something catches my eye inside. With an unexplained note of fear gripping my throat, I open it and read words inside, written in red pen.

‘I see you.’

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 59

           There can be no doubt about it. His eyes bore into me. I’m rooted to the spot. But there is something in the stare: a whispering hint of threat.

            I’m staring back at him so intently, that when he makes a sudden movement, I fall back into the table behind me and have to catch myself. It rocks and drinks go flying. The music fans and patrons around it groan and start to blame each other. One pushes another and there is a domino effect around the room.

            The man doesn’t notice a thing. I can’t hear him over the music but the intense look on his face disappears and he jumps for joy. He raises his hand and I see a complicated piece of equipment in my hand, about the size of a remote control but with wires and complicated little gadgets sticking out here and there.

            He turns and starts out of the bar, moving more quickly than would otherwise be normal.

            I stand and move after him. He had seen me, I’m absolutely certain of it, and that means I have to catch him. If there’s a way of reaching my loved ones again, then I will find it. I had thought it impossible, it’s what we’re conditioned to think - the people that leave us are gone, they’re not coming back.

            But what if they’re not, what if I’m not. I don’t know how I’ll explain appearing to my parents in the middle of the living room. Surprise, your son’s a ghost! I will find a way though.

            I burst out into the sunlight, passing out of the noisy, crowded room and exchanging the music for the urban orchestra of the Roman streets.

            I cast around, whipping my head this way and that. He must be out here, he has to be.

            There he is, already at the end of the road. He must have sprinted away from the pub. Why’s he in such a hurry?

            I sprint myself, absent mindedly dodging a car as it turns towards me. Some human traits are hard to shake. I don’t think I’ll ever stop behaving like that. I want to live, not even death will stop me.

            I turn the corner he disappeared round and catch him again, halfway down the next street. I pump my arms, quickly losing my breath and stamina. I really should have worked out more in life. Then again, the call of science books was always too great for me to resist, not to mention the pull of the comic tradition.

            Without warning or cause for concern for his own self preservation, he stops in the middle of the road and turns, just as I see the tourbus barrel towards him.

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 58

           The first thing I notice is the music. There’s a band on, playing a track I recognize; an Irish song called ‘Fisherman’s Waltz’, but sung in thick Italian accents. The marrying of two cultures is quite a sight to behold.

            I edge past a couple at a table, I see he’s coaxed the waitress down to sit with him.

            I decide to stand and watch the band through the gaps in the crowd. Naturally, I could pass through all of them and gain front row seats, but it’s not in my nature to cause discomfort.

            I close my eyes and reach out on a whim. The room appears in shadows. The feelings of the living are invisible to me, their innermost thoughts are guarded by layers of flesh and bone. I imagine that if I’m a signal, the denseness of their bodies distorts the wave, and bounces it back towards me.

            The music pulses towards me in the same way as Yates when I saw him through the door. The sound emerges from the guitars in jagged lines, cutting the air, the accordians are languid and easy going, easing the tense knot left by the Colosseum. The set of drums reverberates with a low vibration. I feel the sound shake me, from my toes, up to my chest, the same way that it would at a gig. I remember the countless times I’d seen my favourite bands. The moments the music became a part of me and flashes emerge from my memories, instances when the music and my soul walked hand in hand.

            And there, towards the edge of the room, is one more spirit. I walk towards him, the curiosity of my new discovery alighting my scientist’s brain. I want to know if this is something I share.

            I cross the room, stopping in front of him.

            ‘Hi,’ I venture.

            He explodes in a rapid foreign language, not Italian. He waves his arms to the side and I see I’m blocking his view. I start and stumble to my left. He dismisses me with a wave of the arm. I guess not all spirits are Benjamins.

            I’m about to turn back to the band when I see something. A man, and he’s staring. I turn and there’s no one behind me. I stare back, unsettled by him.

            He’s tall and wears a long moleskin coat. The hems are muddied and the sleeves turned up on account of the heat. His hair is long and wiry and really needs to be cut. His face would compliment it. His features are striking and jaw angular, and his grey eyes pierce me, unblinking.

            He is alive, and he can see me.