by Lucy Banks
There are several rowboats in the river, many men in uniform, hanging over the sides, peering through the water. The air ripples with the sound of shouting, whistles being blown, the occasional splash as something is thrown overboard. It is chaos, but a more muted, resigned form of chaos; a pale aftermath of the hell of the Princess Alice’s collision.
Where are you, Eleanor? the ghost wonders, knowing that he must continue his search; that if he doesn’t focus his efforts on finding her, he will surely lose his mind. If he doesn’t set himself a task, what will be left for him? Nothing but a slow sink back down to the bottom, to spend the rest of his conscious moments mentally disintegrating next to his own decaying corpse?
I cannot give in, he tells himself with sudden resolution. Let the acceptance of death follow later, he will address the complexities of his new state of being later on. For now, he must find her, or at least find her body, just so he knows the truth of it. He wonders if she has passed on to the other place, like all the other dead people seem to have done.
But if she has, he thinks, fear burning inside him, why have I not? Why would I be left behind?
These are questions he cannot bear to think about at present. Instead, he glides seamlessly through the water, past the hoarse, freezing men and their rescue efforts, to the glossy mud of the riverbank.
It is a scene from the darkest nightmare. There, countless more bodies are piled on the grass, already pallid and distended with death. For a moment, he thinks he sees Eleanor, a glassy-eyed beauty laid carelessly beside a tree, arms twisted at unnatural angles. Then he realises this woman is younger, her hair a different colour. He sighs in relief, and renewed misery, for where could she be? He feels he has already seen so many.
There are other women who remind him of her, plus many more corpses from all walks of life. He spies one of the women he’d seen standing with Elizabeth Stride, the one with red hair and the impudent expression. One of her shoes is missing, and this disturbs him more than the sight of the rest of her; that drenched, naked foot, so vulnerable without its lace-up boot to cloak it. The light from the neighbouring oil lamp catches her toe, highlighting the bunion twisting it to one side. That foot will never walk again, he thinks sadly. It will never dance, never run, never even twitch in bed. It is nothing now.
Overcome, he simply stands and watches. The larger boat, the one that ploughed into the Princess Alice, is still sitting in the river. He notices, with bitterness, that it is almost completely undamaged. Some of her crew are even still aboard, helping those below to lift bodies from the water. They look like dead things themselves, glowing unnaturally in the waning moonlight.
The ghost looks up. It will be morning soon, and what then? Will he fly out of existence? Or will the sun drive him away to some dark corner of this city? Every ghost story he’s ever heard is set at night-time. Have I become one of those creatures? he wonders bleakly, thinking of the gory, blood-soaked phantoms that Fred used to conjure up in his stories, during those late nights as children. Even Arthur’s pale, lovelorn apparitions seem unnerving now, those meandering tales of wandering spirits, howling out on the streets, looking for their lovers. We mocked him so much at the time for his stories, he remembers, closing his eyes. But his version of the afterlife was more accurate than ours. Despair. Confusion. Relentless sadness. This is what it really is.
Still the men work, tirelessly bobbing across the lightening water, heedless of the rising sun at their backs. The morning finally comes, weak and feeble as death itself, and the ghost looks upon his new, misted form, seeing it clearly for the first time. It is horrifying. His fingers, at times, seem like wispy echoes of their former selves, with lines and markings that echo what they once were. But when his emotion rises, they fade, mist over, sometimes disappearing completely.
What am I? he asks, knowing there is no answer. An unnatural thing? A ghoul or monster? And what is to be done about it? How long must I endure it for?
Without any answers to hand, he resumes his search. The light makes the landscape more nightmarish, not less; the faces of the dead shining pale, the vague bloat of their bellies and cheeks already evident. The officers check through jacket pockets, no doubt trying to discover the identities of the victims. Their distaste for the task is evident in every grimace, every wipe of the brow, and their reluctance to truly look at the corpses at their feet. The ghost does not blame them. He knows he would have been the same.
There are some survivors, he can see that now. A pitifully small huddle of people, some sitting by a neighbouring tree, others pacing restlessly like animals, blankets draped over their shoulders. Rather than congregate together, they have mostly chosen to disperse. Perhaps that way, it is easier to bear; by not talking about it, they can choose to pretend it has not happened.
A tall, mess-headed woman is talking to one of the officers. Although her back is turned, the ghost can tell it is Elizabeth Stride. Resentment flares within him, that such a person as she should survive, when he and Eleanor have died. There is no God, he thinks, hating her, and hating the world around him. No God would allow this to happen.
Despite himself, he drifts closer, keen to hear what she is saying. The officer’s expression is unreadable from a distance, though his exhausted, hollow expression suggests he’s losing patience with her.
The ghost stands between them, marvelling at their lack of awareness. He waves a tentative hand in Elizabeth Stride’s face, but she doesn’t flinch. Then he raises the other and punches her, with all his force, across the cheek. His hand flies through her skin, emerging cleanly the other side. He hadn’t felt a thing, and neither had she. The ghost bites back a sob.
“I t…t…told you, you wouldn’t b…b…be able to spell my name if I g…gave you it.”
Why is she stuttering? he wonders, then notices her jaw; the swollen mass on the right-hand side, pulling her face into an uneven crescent. She was kicked when swimming for safety, he remembers that now.
The officer sighs and scratches his forehead. “Madam, surely you can see why we need to take names? Now, if you’d just—”
“—I d…don’t wish to. You’ll never find all the d…d...dead folks’ names anyway, you’re on a f...f...fool’s mission.”
“Well, do you see anyone you know down here?” He gestures to the piles of bodies, without looking at them. “Any names are of use to us, as I am sure you can understand.”
Elizabeth Stride refuses to look, though the ghost notices the shine of her eyes, and softens. This is harder for her than she’s showing, he realises. She is only just keeping herself together. “G…go and talk to someone else,” she whispers, fingers clutched together at the front of her skirt. “I c…c...cannot help you.”
With a grunt of exasperation, the officer moves along. Elizabeth Stride remains for a moment, staring at the river, as the rising sun gradually turns her skirts from grey to mud-brown. The tilt of her chin, though puffed out of proportion from the blow, is proud, unrelenting. She looks like a warrior, he realises, with grudging respect.
Finally, she turns, the sweep of her skirt brushing the grass-dew below. The ghost follows. There seems little else to do. He’s confident that Eleanor is not here, that she’s probably down in the depths with the hundreds of others, staring sightlessly upwards. The thought of it strangles him, and he pushes it down, turning his mind elsewhere.
Elizabeth’s pace is surprisingly swift, considering the events of the night. Keeping her head down, she marches away, past the growing crowds of people, some survivors of the disaster, being comforted or tended to by others, and some gawping onlookers, avidly drinking in the details, storing them for a later retelling to family and friends.
Still, the ghost follows, keeping just behind her back. He does not want to be by her side, it expresses an intimacy that repulses him. Better to float on after her and see where she goes, he thinks, with a clinging desperation, for she is the only familiar thing here, the only anchor of his former life
in all this chaos.
“Mrs Stride! Mrs Stride!”
That voice, the ghost thinks, with a sense of wonder. Plaintive, cracked, and damaged, but he’d know it anywhere. Relief pours through him like honey, warm, comforting, and safe. In amongst this hell, he’s finally discovered the one thing to stop him falling off the edge. Eleanor.
She is alive, he thinks, and doesn’t know whether to smile or weep.
Elizabeth stops, massages her jaw, and looks down.
There is Eleanor, slumped by the foot of a tree, hair tangled, dress sodden and stained. My wife. The ghost races towards her, seeing only her face, grimy and exhausted though it is; her familiar body, those delicate hands, now pressed cautiously to her stomach. He touches her, over and over, fingers tracing her nose, her cheekbone, her lip; but he can feel nothing.
“Oh, my love,” he whispers, and knows that she cannot hear him.
“What are you doing here?” Elizabeth Stride’s voice, though guarded, is curious. She crouches, ignoring the interested stares of the people nearby.
A tear gathers in Eleanor’s eye, then rolls falteringly to her chin. “I was on that boat… so were you, I saw you on there. I—”
“Don’t tell anyone you saw me on there.” The brusqueness, the lack of social niceties, shocks the ghost. Why does it matter if anyone knows she was on that boat? he wonders, looking at her with renewed dislike.
A disjointed sob brings his attention back to his wife. He wishes he could envelop her in his arms, reassure her that she would be safe, that all would be well, and the impact of his physical state hits him like a hammer in the chest. I can never touch her again, he thinks, remembering the feel of her skin under his fingers, the soft bounce of her hair against his cheek. He cries too, and their sobbing combines; together in some distant way, if only for a minute or so.
“Where is your husband?” Elizabeth Stride asks eventually, in a gentler tone. “Did he not survive?”
Eleanor clutches her stomach more tightly, and lets out a wail; childlike, plaintive. It tears the ghost open to hear it, that single raw note of grief.
Elizabeth Stride stands, still clutching at her face. Though the injury gives her pain, she goes to lengths to disguise the fact, only wincing slightly at sudden movement. “I am sorry for your loss,” she says eventually, looking away. “This world is a damned cruel place, and it takes happiness from us as swiftly as breathing.”
And then she is gone, a hunched, stalking figure, pushing her way through the crowds.
The ghost stays with Eleanor. What else is there for him to do? This must be my purpose now, he thinks, hovering his hand over hers, praying that she could feel it, at least on some subconscious level. I must stay with her and protect her. And wait until she is ready to join me in death.
At the thought, his spirits lift, just a little. They may be apart now, separated by the impenetrable gulf of life and death. But one day, Eleanor will surely die, as all humans must. And then, he will be waiting for her. He will make sure of it.
TWENTY-FOUR
— 2017 —
HERE THEY ARE again, walking by the River Thames. Strange how he always ends up here, one way or another. It calls to him, like a siren chorusing to its victim, and powerless, he answers its cry.
The Docks are so different now. A marina is choked with row after row of bobbing white yachts. Beige-bricked buildings overlook the waters, people’s dwellings, he believes. It has become gentrified, freed of its grimy, arduous past. But then, everything has changed. It all races past him with increasing speed, and he fears where the future will take him next.
He fears existing another day, especially in this brutish, modern world.
The Fortune Teller paces beside him, quiet as ever, lost in her thoughts. A companion at least, in these dark, troubling days.
“Why did you do what you did?” she asks, finally. “Why did you try to destroy yourself?”
The ghost remembers the machine; diving through the screen, then the explosion. The blood on the boy’s face. He hadn’t meant to do that.
“I don’t remember,” he lies. “I don’t recollect much, to be honest.”
“Yet you said earlier that you remembered the Docks,” she says pertly. “The memories are there, deep within you, don’t you know that?”
He shakes his head. “That’s not true. I need you to know what’s really happening to me. I’m losing everything, every experience I ever had. It’s all fading.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why not?” Her tone aggravates him, belittles his pain.
“Because I think you do remember,” the Fortune Teller says. “I think Eleanor, Arthur, Fred, Georgie; it’s all buried within you, you just choose not to see it. I think you know what happened with your wife. You know how she survived, how she went on to find some sort of happiness. You know that you had a son, and you know what he grew into. You know all this. You’ve been travelling through time, thinking yourself a helpless onlooker, but that’s not the case. That’s not how it is at all, do you hear me? Do you hear me, S—”
“Shh.” He holds out a hand, albeit a faded, foggy one. “Stop it, please.” It is hard enough to hear her say the names of the people he loved, let alone his own.
“You won’t let me remind you of what you’re called?” She sighs, twitches in and out of view, showing her agitation. “Very well. How about mine? Do you remember me? I am sure that you do. It was you who led me here, after all. You cannot have such impact in a person’s life, then forget that person’s name.”
The ghost stops, closes his eyes. It is a pleasant evening, though as ever, the sun casts no warmth upon him. “I don’t know what you’re called,” he says heavily. “I remember nothing, and that is the problem.”
“Do you remember what happened with Bo and Zoe? The boy we’ve been following? The beautiful girl he longs for?”
“Bits and pieces.” He recollects letters on screens, anguished love, long-distance heartbreak. But that is different. That is recent history, and he is sure it will fade swiftly in a few days’ time.
The Fortune Teller stares at him intently. “You remember further back than that, I am sure.”
He shakes his head. “I do not.”
“Try, then. Or at least let me tell you what I know.”
The ghost winces. He wishes he could just walk away and leave this relentless onslaught. But where to walk to? This modern world is more intimidating than any other that he’s inhabited, an alien planet with its polished metals and glass, its noisy machines, its impossible technology. Besides, he’s never gone further than this small section of the city. It’s all he knows. He dares not leave.
“You cannot continually tell me tales of the past.” He starts to walk again, knowing that he is moving too swiftly, and that she will struggle to keep pace with him. But he wants to be alone. He craves solitude, he cannot take the pressure of her questioning.
“Why can’t I keep reminding you of your memories?”
“It is impractical.” He is aware that his voice sounds querulous, pompous, when what he actually means is I cannot curse you to an existence like that. Why can he not express what he wants to say? Why is he often so cold towards her, when it doesn’t reflect the truth of the matter? Because that is the only way I can navigate a path through this endless horror, he realises. Coldness prevents feeling too much. It numbs me.
The Fortune Teller clutches him. The ice of her fingers breathes through his arm, then the sensation dies. “It’s not impractical,” she insists. “On the contrary. It is the only way we can carry on.”
“Unless we choose not to carry on.” He mutters the sentiment more loudly than he’d intended.
Stillness presides while she muses his words.
“That’s the advice you gave me when I was living,” she replies, without a trace of bitterness. “And look where it got me.”
That’s not how it happened, he thinks fierc
ely. He doesn’t remember the exact details of that terrible night, but he knows he never meant for her to do what she did.
Perhaps she is right, he thinks, mulling it over. Maybe some memories are hidden within him, but the agonising truth is that he cannot access them when he needs to. They arise unbidden; these days less so than before.
“What do you propose, then?” he asks, ashamed of his harsh tone, even as the words tumble from him.
“That you let me be the keeper of your stories.”
He laughs. “I have no tales that are worthy of storage. Perhaps it is best to simply let them disappear.”
“No, that’s not true. You need to know your past, so you can move on with your future.”
The ghost’s temper frays, then snaps, brittle as ancient twine tugged to its limits. “What future? We don’t have a future, because we are not alive! All we have is a meaningless, impotent existence!”
Her form solidifies. Those eyes, he thinks, angered yet transfixed. Dark and full of earnestness. Despite himself, he is calmed, simply by meeting her steady, ceaseless gaze.
“Why not look at it another way?” she says simply, ignoring his outburst, much as a mother would at her offspring’s childish tantrum.
“There is no other way.”
“You are wrong. What about seeing this as an opportunity? Unlike every other soul, you and I will live forever. We don’t know why, we don’t know how it was that we were chosen and most others not, but why not see it as a positive thing?”
The ghost presses his hands to the ornate railing, wishing he could feel the cool, hard steel beneath his fingers. He needs the brutality of metal, something solid to tether himself to. But I can only imagine what it feels like, he realises, letting his hands slip helplessly through to the other side. All we have left is pretence. “It is not a positive thing,” he says slowly, willing every word to come out correctly, so he can convince her once and for all. “Because all the other dead people have passed somewhere better, while we are stuck here.”
