Nobody True (11 page)

It stopped abruptly, but I continued to stare. She’d given up, but would be worried that I hadn’t answered. What the hell could I do? I certainly couldn’t phone her back. One more try at the body. You never know, it could just work this time.

I rose and knelt on the bed, gazing down at my mashed face and the sight made me feel sick to my non-existent stomach. I didn’t avert my gaze though. Even if I could get back inside and take control, tap out my number on the phone despite blood-drenched and now misaligned real eyes, how could I speak to Andrea without a discernible mouth? I’d only spit gore and loose teeth into the mouthpiece.

Shit in a bubble bath, what the fuck was I supposed to do? I roared my anguish, a sound no living person could ever hear, and I sobbed into my hands. What had happened to me? Why had it happened to me?

Understand that the thing which makes you a person is not the flesh and blood, but the mind—not the brain—that lives within the shell. It forms the personality, the philosophy, the instinct and perception, the very nature of the man or woman or child themselves and I’ve learned over the years that this is what you take with you when you leave the body. It is you, and when you’re in spirit or OBE you perform just as though you’re in the physical. You close your eyes, you weep, you feel fear, you feel joy, you feel all emotions as usual; and you dress yourself as you would in life, your mind creates the phantom material; as mentioned before, you can experience desire, but because your mind is aware there can be no physical expression, it necessarily becomes unimportant. Your mind also reconciles other senses, so that you can hear, touch (but not actually feel—it’s all to do with perception), obviously see and you can speak, although no one else will hear you (in feet, all those senses are inexplicably heightened, because no longer are there physical defects or dulling limitations). I guess it’s all to do with the mind convincing itself—no, wait, it has to be stronger than that. Possibly it’s because the mind is the reality, all other material things non-existent or irrelevant, unless accepted by the mind itself. I’m no philosopher, never was, but it makes some kind of sense to me. Let’s just say I existed in the sixth sense, which does not preclude all of the other five. Taste is missing and so is smell. Just like in dreams, in fact.

But the main point I’m making is that even in my spirit form I acted exactly as if I were occupying my body as normal. I could sit, lie down, walk, run, jump. And on top of this, I knew I could fly, float, pass through walls, and think myself to other locations.

So now I kneeled on the bed and wailed. I was frightened and lost and had no idea where I was supposed to go from here. I was homeless; I had no body and no tangibility.

I cried for Primrose and Andrea, and I cried for myself. God, I even cried for Oliver and Sydney, my friends and business partners: what were they going to do without me, who would get the work done? I cried for my mother. We didn’t get along anymore, but what was she to do with me gone? She’d lost one man already, her husband, and now me, her son. Self-pity mingled with commiseration for my friends and family as I hugged my self there on the big, blood-ruined bed, rocking backwards and forwards on my knees, and all the while the demolished face of my old self watched me with crooked glazed eyes.

It took some time, but eventually I began to calm down. I wasn’t all-cried-out just yet—I knew more tears would be shed later—but I gradually became aware that staying here with the wrecked meat and bone that once was my human form was pointless. Besides, I felt an urgent need to see my wife and daughter once more, because maybe there would be no other chance; if I was dead (and let’s face it, all the signs indicated that I was) I might have only this last chance before I went on to the place where all souls go (I began truly hoping there was a heaven after all).

Before my life expired, merely the imagined picture of a location was enough to get me there almost immediately; I was always aware of my flight, but it usually went by so swiftly it hardly felt like a journey. This time, however, I consciously had to make the effort of leaving the hotel room by passing through the thick outside wall into the night. Once outside I had to follow a route to my home that I knew, transportation now a considered thing rather than just a wish-fulfillment. I was strangely chilled as I travelled, as if a breeze was flowing through me, even though I had no physical outline to capture its draught, and my journey was by short body-hopping movements, casting off with either hands or feet to float some distance before sinking to the ground again. It was like the recurring dreams I used to have where I never could quite fly above the earth completely, my own pragmatism allied with gravity drawing me back to solid ground each time. Those astronauts who had walked the moon must have shared the same experience.

The London streets were quiet, the occasional lonely lorry or all-night bus passing me by; only a few cars were about, their headlights dipped. There were people here and there, sometimes in small groups as if they had left late-night parties or clubs together (this was the weekend, I reminded myself) and I avoided them without knowing why. But on turning a corner and briefly grounded at the time, I ran straight through a person who had been about to make the turn from me other direction.

It was the weirdest feeling, because for an instant I was almost part of the stranger. Alien thoughts poured through me, not quite visions and certainty not manifestations, but thoughts, representations of people the person must have known. There was a fraction of a situation too, an altercation between two women, neither of whom was particularly attractive, over the person—a man, I assumed, the guy whose body I’d trespassed on—himself. There were other things too, as if this pedestrian was carrying the baggage of his whole life around with him, but these were confusing and easily relegated by the two-women scenario. Then it was gone and I was in open space again.

I felt suddenly drained, slightly nauseated, as if my invasion was punishable—or perhaps too much to handle—and I came to a halt. Turning my head to watch the man’s retreating back, I saw that he also had stopped and was looking behind him towards me, a bewildered expression on his lamp-lit face. I thought he might even see me and I unconsciously raised a hand in salutation, but of course he stared right through me (literally).

He shuddered, a jerky spasm, a feeling of someone walking over his grave, I guessed. And I felt the same way too, although I didn’t give a shudder. The man turned and went on his way, disappearing round the next corner, leaving me perplexed and no less afraid for myself. It was an unpleasantness I intended to avoid in the future. If there was some kind of future for me.

Resuming my journey, I discovered I could no longer float quite so easily. I realized much later that I was becoming used to my situation, my state-of-being, and the familiarity appeared to set its own limitations. You see, this was not entirely the OBE of before, when I had a proper life. No, I was now in some kind of limbo, unattached but still linked with the former life. Somehow, this condition imposed certain restrictions and I was yet to learn what they were. I guessed that the more I accepted and adapted, the less freedoms I would have, reasoned thought perhaps setting its own boundaries, if only to a certain extent.

The journey home was one of the worst I’d ever undertaken; I was in grief and I was frightened and confused. Only the image of my loved ones, Prim and Andrea, kept me from sinking into an invisible whimpering heap on the pavement. This can’t be death, I repeatedly told myself, this can’t be the consequence of dying, the next stage, the step through the door; this couldn’t be the after-death existence most of us hoped for. If it was, where were all the other souls? If I was a ghost, where were all those who had preceded me? Anyway, I didn’t feel like a ghost. Disembodied maybe, but I certainly had not left this place on earth. Where was the Big Judgement those nuns in junior school had promised me (or, more truthfully, threatened me with)? Where was the eternal peace and joy we were supposed to expect, and where was God’s all-embracing love? Or was He having a laugh? (Yep, by now a little anger was creeping in and that was no bad thing—somehow it gave me a bit more focus.)

I went on, at one moment boiling with rage, the next tearful with despair. Never had I felt so alone. I longed to be with my wife and daughter again and I kept willing myself to be home, hoping that the willing would work as it always had before, so that just the thought of Prim and Andrea inside our house would take me there instantly as though the mere desire would act like some futuristic transporter vehicle, a Star Trek machine without the electronics and dazzling light particles. It wasn’t to be though and I wandered the streets like (literally again) some lost soul.

Nevertheless, I arrived home more swiftly than if I’d been plodding along with real legs and feet, and no tiredness accompanied the effort. I stood by the stone post at the bottom of our short driveway and looked at the house, waiting, not to catch my breath, which was totally unnecessary, but to relish the moment. I felt relieved and at the same time flushed with anticipation.

Oddly, there was a light on in an upstairs window despite the hour. It came from Prim’s bedroom.

15

It must have been the non-thinking, the sheer reaction, that got me into my daughter’s bedroom so swiftly. One moment I was standing by the wall post, the next I was gliding up the driveway to the entrance (my feet skimming inches above the ground) and had passed through the sturdy wooden barrier that was the front door and in a flash was on my way upstairs.* I didn’t so much climb the stairs as sail right up them, finding myself outside Prim’s open bedroom door without further thought.

*Let me just tell you about going through a closed door or wall:

You don’t just flow through in an easy, fluid movement like a ghost does it in a movie. What happens is that for an instant you are part of that substance, be it wood, stone or cloth. With the last you become part of the fabric itself, a piece of the weave; with wood you’re the very grain; with stone you’re part of the dust that makes it. You mix with the atoms, integrate with them, become unified until you move beyond. It’s more or less the same when you pass through a living body, only then you also become part of its memories and metaphysical nature; but more of that later.

I have no idea why I paused there—perhaps I was preparing myself for another shock—but pause I did. No, now I think about it, it was more of an involuntary hesitation than a deliberate halt, for I could hear a familiar soothing voice. It could be that I expected both Prim and my wife to glimpse me in this new and surprising state, for I hadn’t yet learned enough about my condition to know how it might affect others. In OBE I’d always been invisible to people, but now the rules might have changed dramatically. Some people do see ghosts, don’t they? Especially when they’ve had some physical connection. I truly did not want to scare my wife and daughter. But then, was I a ghost? True enough, I appeared to be dead, my body wasn’t breathing anymore (despite its incredibly ruined state I had checked for any signs of breathing or heartbeat back in the hotel room), but I really did… not… feel… dead! It was becoming a mantra for me.

Andrea’s soft-spoken words encouraged me to enter. The room was lit by a colourful Winnie the Pooh lamp, a gentle glow that only tempered the shadows, rather than banishing them completely. Beneath the lamp on the pretty bedside cabinet stood Prim’s little blue puffer, placed on the very edge so that it was within easy reach. Our daughter had suffered her first asthma attack more than a year ago and it almost broke my heart to know she was always so afraid of having another (she’d had four more since the first one) that the Ventolin spray was always close at hand, especially during the night. Some kids had their own personal security blanket; my little girl had her inhaler. I stood in the doorway watching for a long difficult moment. Andrea was sitting on the bed, with Primrose cradled in one arm, pillows propped up behind them. Her other hand stroked our daughter comfortingly as Andrea continued to speak in that low, calming voice.

“It was just a nasty old dream, darling,” she was saying. “Nothing’s happened to Daddy, I promise you.”

In her arms, Prim clutched Snowy, her favourite teddy bear whose fur used to be pure white but was now faded to a light yellowish grey. I’d given her Snowy on her third birthday.

“But he didn’t answer the phone, Mummy.” Light glistened off cheeks that were still not dry from earlier tears.

“I know, but it was very late and Daddy has been working very hard. He was probably sound asleep.”

“You tried his mobile too.”

“Yes, but it was switched off.”

“He always keeps it by the bed.”

“The hotel would already have a phone right next to the bed. He wouldn’t need his mobile.”

“Then why didn’t he hear the hotel phone?”

“Because he must be exhausted. You know how hard Daddy is to wake up when he’s been working too hard.”

“But I’m afraid, Mummy.”

“I know, Prim, but there’s no need. I’ll ring again first thing in the morning. You’ll see, he’ll answer it then and wonder what the fuss is about.”

“In the dream he was very lost.”

“You always get anxious when Daddy’s away. Remember when you cried because you thought he’d fallen down some stairs? That was a long time ago, wasn’t it? And when he got home, nothing at all had happened to him, had it?”

I remembered the incident. While it was true that nothing had happened to me physically, it was an afternoon when I’d spontaneously gone out-of-body while sitting at my desk and half-falling asleep. I’d been surprised to find myself in this other realm without any warning and had had no control whatsoever. In the OBE I was at the top of a tall building, standing on the very edge of the roof (it was a familiar building some miles away from my office and I had no idea how I’d got there) and about to take a step forward. Well, whereas if in control I would have glided to a safer place, this time I fell. Really it was no more than what sometimes occurs in a normal dream, where you seem to take a wrong step off a pavement and the sudden jolt wakes you, but in this instance the location was a little more serious. And, as if in a normal dream, I was instantly awake, my whole body no doubt jerking with surprise, and I almost did fall off my chair, but I managed to save myself in time. Fortunately, I was alone in the office I shared with Oliver, or I would have had to endure his laughter and teasing for the rest of the afternoon. My heart was beating a little faster than usual, but otherwise I was okay; it was only later I learned that around the same time—about four in the afternoon—Primrose, who was belted up in the back of Andrea’s little Peugeot on their way home from school, had given a small scream and burst into tears, proclaiming that her daddy had fallen down some stairs and hurt himself.