Every Touch (2 page)

   “Am I dead?” he whispered.  His hand covered his mouth as he continued to stare at them in horror.  “Am I dead?”

   Panic seized him.  His heart thudded against his ribs.  Tears burned his eyes.  His lungs stopped working. 

   He backed away from Trish and John, stopping in the middle of the living room.  This couldn’t be happening.  He had no memory of dying.  How could he be dead?  This couldn’t be real. He must be dreaming.  That was it, he was dreaming.  But it didn’t feel like a dream.  It felt horribly, horribly real. 

   He sat down heavily on the sofa and dropped his head into his hands. He could hear Trish and John still packing up the contents of his kitchen cupboards, talking, but he didn’t want to look at them. 

   He focused instead on scrutinising everything that had happened since he woke up on the floor, attempting to make sense of it, trying to work out what was really going on.  Because he couldn’t be dead, that was ridiculous.  That would make him a ghost, and he didn’t believe in ghosts. 

   After a while he looked down at the sofa.  He hadn’t been able to touch the door handle and he’d walked right through the door.  Why was it he could sit on the sofa?  Why was it holding him up?  It shouldn’t be. 

   As soon as the thought occurred to him, he promptly dropped through the surface of the couch and landed painfully on his backside on the floor.  He winced and looked down, seeing his chest emerging from the seat cushion.  It made him feel sick and he shuffled forwards rapidly until he was sitting on the floor in front of it.  Sticking out of furniture. He would never get used to that.

   Get used to it.  He wouldn’t get used to anything about this.  The whole situation was like a nightmare.  There had to be some kind of mistake.

   His sister and brother-in-law had started packing up other things in the room and were moving around him.  Denny got up and went to sit on the floor in the corner where they wouldn’t accidentally walk through him.  He didn’t even want to know what that would be like.

   For a long time he sat and watched as they packed away his belongings, sorting them into what they wanted to keep, give away and throw out. 

   He watched them packing away his life.

The numbness of despair was all Denny could feel. 

   He’d lost all hope of waking up.  If he was dead, why couldn’t he remember dying?  What had happened?  He tried to think back to the last thing he remembered before waking up.  He was here, in his flat, he knew that.  Watching TV, he remembered watching something, but he wasn’t sure what.  The news maybe.  And weather.  That was it.  He remembered it was going to rain the next day.  But how long ago was that? 

  Maybe it would come back to him, like his sight had.  Although he wasn’t certain that was what he wanted.

   After a while, John phoned to order a pizza and he and Trish stopped to eat when it arrived.  Denny watched them from his place in the corner of the living room.

  Eating. Could he eat?  Would he ever be able to eat again?  He wasn’t hungry, but the smell of the pizza drove him insane, making his mouth water.  When he couldn’t take it any longer, he stood to look at it, decided to stop torturing himself and went back into the bedroom, pausing before plunging through the door as quickly as he could. 

   He paced around for a while then went to look out of the window.  The sky was overcast, but it was dry.  He looked down at the people walking along the street three floors below, going about their lives.  Their lives.  They didn’t know how lucky they were to still have lives.  He hadn’t appreciated his own enough. 

   Denny knew he had never amounted to much, never really found his calling, if there had even been such a thing for him.  He was thirty-three and he’d pretty much coasted through his too short life.  Just done enough to get by in everything.  He knew how to do a lot of things, but none of them well.  He played the piano, but never in front of anyone because he wasn’t very good.  He worked at the police station, but he wasn’t a policeman, just part of administrative support.  He had thought at one time he would have liked to be a cop, but had never got around to trying, as with most things.  He had wanted to find the love of his life, but all he’d had were a string of fun, but not very committed relationships.  A life of good intentions, but not many actions, that was him. 

   And now it was too late.

   He often thought, especially after his mother died five years ago in a car accident and his father of a heart attack a few months later, that his parents must have been disappointed in him.  They never said so, they were always very supportive of both their children, but he thought they must have been so much prouder of their oldest.  Trish was a lawyer, made a good living, was in a loving marriage, had a nine year old son.  She was everything Denny wasn’t.  And she was his heroine.  He still looked up to her and he was still her baby brother who she loved and cared for.  A lump came to his throat as he thought about the pain she must be feeling now.

   He went back to the living room where Trish and John were just finishing their meal and looked down at her.  She looked so sad.

   “I’m sorry, Trish,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for leaving you.”

   His chest was suddenly painfully tight and he couldn’t hold back the sob that welled up within him.  Going back to his corner, he sat and pulled his legs up to his chest, laid his head on his knees and cried.

   Denny didn’t move again for the rest of the afternoon.  He sat watching Trish and John pack everything in his living room away, removing all trace that he had ever lived there.  His bookcases stood bare, all his books, CDs, DVDs, gone.  Every cupboard and drawer was empty.  Everything that had said Dennis Carpenter lived here lay hidden in the pile of boxes by the door. 

   Trish and John stood looking at it. 

   “We can come back tomorrow and do the bedroom,” John said.  “We need to leave now or we’ll be late picking up Jay.”

   Trish nodded.  “Okay.” 

   She turned to look around the now soulless room, if you didn’t count Denny still sitting in the corner.  She sniffed, a tear running down her cheek.

   John put his arm around her.  “Come on,” he said, “let’s go.  You’ve done enough for today.”

   She nodded and they picked their coats up from where they were laid over the back of the sofa.  Denny stood to follow them as they headed for the door.  He didn’t want to stay by himself tonight.  Whatever he decided to do in the future, whatever happened, right now he needed to be with his family.

   He managed to slip through the door before Trish closed it behind her.  He knew he could just walk through it, but doing that still gave him the creeps.  They stood silent in the elevator on the way down, John’s arm still around Trish.  Her expression betrayed her sadness and Denny wished he could comfort her somehow.  He looked down at her hand hanging by her side.  Reaching out, he laid his hand over hers then slowly moved so his hand passed into it.  She gasped, jumping, and he jerked back.

   “What?” John said, startled at her sudden movement.

   She was looking at her hand.  “I don’t... I don’t know.  My hand just suddenly felt hot and tingly.”  She stared at it, rubbing it gently with the fingers of her other hand.  “It did the same thing earlier.” 

   John took it and studied it.  “Does it still feel like that?”

   She shook her head.  “No, it was just for a second.  It just felt really weird.  I don’t know.”

  She smiled as he kissed the back of her hand and let it go.

   Denny wondered if he could use this.  If they could feel him, maybe he could somehow get them to realise he was there.  He reached out and touched John’s hand, but there was no reaction.  He tried again, waving his hand back and forth through John’s fingers.  Still nothing. 

   He sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets.  Maybe it was because they were related that Trish could feel him and John couldn’t.  Or maybe there was some other reason that, like the rest of the whole being dead situation, he didn’t understand.  Whatever it was, if only she could feel him, it wasn’t going to help him.  She’d probably just think there was something wrong with her and all his efforts would do would be to send her to the doctor.

   The lift reached the lobby and Denny followed Trish and John out as they walked towards the front door.  A white haired, elderly man leaning on a walking stick reached the door outside, pushing at it awkwardly and John rushed forward to help, opening the door for him. 

   “Thank you, young man,” he said, walking in and seeing Trish.  “Hello, Trish, isn’t it?”

   She smiled at Denny’s neighbour.  “Yes, Mr Duncan.  You remember my husband, John?”

   Mr Duncan lived on the floor below Denny’s flat.  He’d once told him that he and his wife had been there for over thirty years.  They were a nice couple, often inviting him for meals.  He liked them a lot.  They had been a great comfort to him after his parents had died.  Denny thought they probably felt sorry for him, on his own.  Mrs Duncan had died two years after Denny moved in. 

   “Yes, of course,” Mr Duncan said.  “How are you doing now?”

   She sighed.  “It’s still difficult.  We’re moving Denny’s things out now.”

   “It was just the most tragic thing,” Mr Duncan said, shaking his head, “what happened.  He was such a lovely boy.  My wife thought so much of him.  We never had children of our own and she often said she would have liked a son like Denny.”

   Trish nodded quickly, swallowing hard. 

   Denny watched Mr Duncan in sorrow.  He didn’t know they had thought so much of him.  He would often look in on Mr Duncan now he couldn’t walk so well, to see if he needed anything.  He hoped he would have someone else to help him now that Denny couldn’t. 

   “How long has it been?” Mr Duncan was saying.  “Getting on for, what, four weeks now?”

   “Four weeks and two days,” Trish said.

   Denny’s jaw dropped.  Four
weeks
?  It had taken him four weeks to wake up? 

   “I’m so sorry,” Mr Duncan said, “the whole building was so shaken up by what happened.  I’m just so glad they caught him and I hope he gets what he deserves.”

   Denny frowned.  “Who’s ‘he’?” he said.  What
had
happened to him?  Part of him wished he could remember.  The rest was glad he couldn’t.

   “We do too,” John said.

   Mr Duncan took hold of Trish’s hand.  “It gets easier,” he said quietly, “you never forget them, but it does get easier, eventually.”

   Tears began to slide down her face.  “Thank you,” she whispered. 

   He nodded and Denny watched him as he carried on toward the lift.  As John opened the glass door for Trish and walked through after her, Denny ran to get through behind them, before the door swung closed. 

   Suddenly, he was flying backwards onto the floor and skidding across the hard ceramic tiles.  Grimacing in pain, he rubbed his back. “What on earth?” 

   He looked up at the door which was just closing. Trish and John were visible through the glass walking down the steps towards the road beyond.  Denny stood, went back to the door and pushed his hand through it.  It stopped.  He frowned and looked closer.  His hand had passed through the glass of the door, but would go no further.  A barrier as solid as a brick wall, but completely invisible, blocked his way.  He pushed against the unyielding obstruction with no effect.  Bringing his other hand up, he pressed his whole weight into it, to no avail.

  He could see Trish and John nearing their car on the far side of the road.  He began to panic.  He moved his hands to the long windows beside the door, probing for a weakness, but still it wouldn’t budge.  He pressed his hand through the wall to the side of the door, reaching just beyond wrist deep before encountering the same barrier.

   “No,” he said, “please, no.”

   He had to get out, he had to go with them.  He watched in desperation as they climbed into the car.  Frantically, he began pushing through the walls and windows, but everywhere the same obstacle barred his way.  He rushed back to the door in time to see the car pulling away.

   “No!” he screamed, pounding against the barrier through the glass as the car turned a corner and disappeared from view.  He staggered back. 

   “Please come back,” he whispered, tears pouring down his face.  “Please don’t leave me.”

   He stood still for a few seconds then sank to the floor, sobbing.  He wrapped his arms around himself, shaking.  He was trapped and alone.  He didn’t know what to do, what was going on, what was going to happen to him.  He needed to be with his sister, just to be near her, but he couldn’t even do that. What would he do now?

   Eventually, he got up and walked back up the stairs to his flat.  His living room was too empty so he went into the bedroom, which still looked like his.  Lying down on the bed, he pulled his knees up to his chest.  He just wanted to forget everything, to pretend everything was normal.  He was on his bed, in his flat, everything as it should be. 

   He closed his eyes.  After a while, he fell asleep.