it occurred even though I was only in spirit, and I assumed that the “blackouts” were nothing more than falling asleep, unexpected though they were, and gave me the chance to replenish myself.
More than once I bumped into lonely ghosts on my wanderings, but they appeared either perplexed by me or frightened, as if I were the ghost and they were human. They scooted away, or evaporated, leaving me alone again.
I visited more churches, because I found their tranquillity was good for meditation, and I was meditating more and more as time went on. Night revealed some of its mysteries to me, the activity that continued throughout the sunless hours. I understood why ghosts, visible or otherwise, were more active when the land was dark: it was because at night the streets are emptier and generally people slept, so there would be minimal contact between the dead and the living. It seems ghosts are very shy and often, but not always, aware that they are in the wrong place. As I mentioned, none wanted contact with me and I began to feel like some kind of pariah as far as they were concerned.
Even as I examined, explored, or just observed, I could feel myself waning, not growing weak exactly, but feeling more and more dissociated with the world I knew, somehow growing disconnected from it. Still I delved, still I was interested in everything around me, but not as keenly as before.
I called in on hospitals, often visiting intensive care units to watch souls depart from recently deceased host bodies. Some were happy to go, while others were glum, perhaps confused or disbelieving, a few not even aware that they were dead. There was always a special joyous radiance about the happy ones who accepted their passing, as if they already knew they would find peace and contentment, whereas the souls of those who failed to realize their situation, or who would not accept their death, were dull, grey, listless, and lingered by their corpse far too long. But none of these latter egressions matched the awfulness of Moker’s.
Incidentally, never again did I attempt to insinuate myself into a freshly dead body. The idea was now abhorrent to me and I wondered how I’d managed twice before. (Early on, I considered usurping someone’s living body permanently, to share their life, to be of substance again, but had rejected the idea almost immediately for three reasons: one, having two minds in one head would surely lead to insanity; two, it would be extremely difficult; and three, it would be wrong, very, very wrong—it would be theft.)
I learned a lot during that period of discovery and assessment, reaching understandings I never thought possible. Life itself began to make some kind of sense to me at last.
And day by day (I judged time only by the activity before and around me, the risings of the sun and moon, the day’s lengthening shadows; if I were to stand inside an empty pitch-black room I’d have no idea of passing moments whatsoever; however, this wouldn’t be like my recurring blackouts, because my thought processes would continue to work and thoughts are no judge of time) I became just a little more detached from the world, gradually withdrawing, it seemed, from the existence I used to know.
I figured I should return home before it was too late.
I visited Mother first: I wanted to get it out of the way. It was daytime when I arrived, but only twilight in the front room because of the drawn curtains, with a gap of barely a couple of inches in the middle for light to infiltrate the room. She’d lit candles, five or six of them, two of those on the low coffee table before the lumpy armchair I seemed to have grown up with.
Mother sat in the armchair, leaning forward, the wrists of her clasped hands resting on her knees. Unlike the last time I saw her, she had made some effort to tidy herself up. Her grey-brown hair was brushed and heavily lacquered, the beige blouse she wore beneath a light pink cardigan was neatly pressed, as was the long, pleated skirt she wore.
There was sorrow in her eyes, but no puffiness around them and no redness to the eyelids; it seemed her crying was done. I moved round to her side and saw what she was staring at.
On the coffee table, propped up by something behind and with the two candles acting as sentinels on either side, was a colour photograph held together—it was in four rough-edged sections—with clear Sellotape. It was the picture of me on the day I’d left art college; my young, wide, smile was marred by the rip down the centre of my face, but you could still see the happy anticipation in my eyes, the eagerness to get on with the next exciting stage of my life. Lit by the candles’ soft glow, the assemblage resembled a small shrine in the restful gloom and it occurred to me that this might have been Mother’s intention. Certainly there was no anger in those sad eyes that were taking in my beaming image, nor could I detect any more self-pity. Instead, there was a softness I hadn’t noticed for many years; since I was a child, in fact.
Had her demons finally left her in peace after all these years? I wanted to believe so, but Mother had always been unpredictable. This might be a new, but temporary phase she was going through. I could only hope its influence would not be too short.
I felt my old, uncomplicated love for her returning, a child’s natural blind devotion, and I decided to leave before memories tarnished it. Aware she could never feel the touch, not even the whisper of a breath, on her cheek, I bent low and kissed her anyway.
Holding a mental picture of my house, I allowed myself to travel there by thought alone, which was a wonderful means of transport. Swift, too.
I’d expected to find Andrea on her own and had intended to wait for Primrose to return from school. When I found both of them there I realized it must be a weekend, probably a Sunday by the feel of it. Andrea was resting on our bed, and Prim was next door in her own bedroom, kneeling before the yellow and pink doll’s house we’d bought her for her last birthday. Prim was absorbed in organizing her “little people”—small, plastic men, women, children and animals, who inhabited the make-believe world she loved to escape into—around the wooden building’s various rooms, her own imagination giving them life and story.
Having first established where they both were, I went back to my wife. I gazed down at her lovely face as she lay on the bed and saw that the large wad of gauze held by Elastoplast, which had covered her damaged nose when I had returned to the house after Sydney’s death, was gone. Her face was gaunt and her eyes were damp with unreleased tears. I hoped that they were the last, that she’d finally cried herself out and this was only a moment of weakness, the worst of the grieving having run its course. And yes, I knew she had grieved terribly for me; the dullness of her aura told me how depleted by sadness she felt and I could sense the wretchedness of her spirit itself (I’d become very adept at such sensing lately).
As I watched, she closed her eyes, not to sleep, but to lose herself in a memory. Somehow I knew it was of me.
I noticed what she clutched in her arms, pressing it to her breast. It was one of my old sweaters, its colour a deep blue. A framed photograph stood on the bedside table, a place it had never occupied before. A family shot, a fairly recent one; me with one arm thrown over Andrea’s shoulder and hugging her tight to me, my other hand resting flatly against Prim’s chest, pulling her close between Andrea and myself. All of us were laughing and, as I remembered, not just for the camera—we were at Disneyland, Paris, and had spent most of the day laughing.
Perhaps, before, some of the reluctance to return home was, in part, because I feared Oliver might be there. But he wasn’t. There was no impression of him either. Again, this came from Andrea herself. I sensed nothing of Oliver (and I told you that my perception, or if you like, my intuition, had become acute) and I hoped he was now absent from her life. Maybe the shock of my death had cleansed her of him; maybe guilt had made her realize how deceitful they had been together, and that love cannot flourish on guilt. Could be that Andrea had finally seen Oliver in his true colours—a lying, vain, cheating cokehead. Again, I hoped so.
And I also hoped that, in time, she would forgive herself. I wanted her to find happiness in the future, not misery or loneliness.
I leaned over and kissed her forehead.
Lastly, I went to see Primrose.
She was still playing with the doll’s house and her tiny plastic people when I entered her bedroom and when she unexpectedly looked over her shoulder, I thought she could see me. There was no expression on her sweet little face though and, just as quickly, she returned to her game.
I went over and sat on the floor next to her. I watched her profile as she arranged her little fun world and spoke the tiny people’s lines for them. I used to be fascinated by the playlets she made them perform while I surreptitiously watched from behind a newspaper whenever she set up the whole production downstairs in the living room. Her inventiveness since the age of five had always amazed me, each performance turning into a simple morality tale—plastic children (the same size as the adults) becoming lost, those same kids stealing, then repenting and becoming good once more, the father figure arriving home late from work yet again and missing his dinner, but
