by Gareth Otton
“It’s really coming down out here,” the old man says as he opened the rear passenger door so the Rodney can place his friend inside. “Never seen weather like this. You lads out here with the army?”
Rodney nods and climbs in after his friend, asking the man to hurry.
In the car’s light, his friend’s injuries become all too clear. Blood dribbles from his head. He has scrapes and bruises all over him, and though his eyes are open, he isn’t seeing much. Rodney slaps his friend’s cheek to get him to focus. It’s no use, he is out of it. The old man sees this and stops asking questions, rushing into the driver’s seat and firing up the old engine of the ancient but reliable Land Rover Defender.
Rodney falls into dark thoughts, wondering how he will live with himself if his friend dies. His mind treads that dark path until he is jerked back to the present as the jeep skids to stop. Rodney worries the old man had lost control in the terrible weather, but that fear is put to rest as the window wipers reveal something in the road that makes the old man curse.
“What the hell is that?”
Rodney leans forward to see better. There is something in the road, something that looks like a boulder until Rodney looks closer. Illuminated by the bright light of the jeep’s headlights is a crumpled body that looks far too familiar.
Numb for reasons that have nothing to do with weather, Rodney climbs out of the car to investigate. He steps into the cold and rain, not feeling either, and suddenly suspicious of that. He doesn’t even need to get near the body to know the answer. His worries about needing to live with himself are over.
Suddenly his fresh energy, the lack of feeling, and his new strength make sense. He’s seen the news over the last month, the changes to Cardiff and the hundred miles surrounding it. The Merging, the Borderlands… Ghosts.
As Rodney stares at his body and comes to terms with the fact that he hasn’t survived tonight, he wonders what the future has in store for him. But he still can’t escape that inner voice that reminds him who he was, and what he wants most of all. He joined the army to help people and turn his skills to good use. Who cares if he is dead? His friend still needs help.
So Rodney does what most ghosts never do. He ignores the change in his existence and moves his own body off the road so he can get his friend hospital.
◆◆◆
Thomas Farandon falls into his chair as the door explodes inwards. It moves so fast it bounces off the wall, the noise echoing around his office like a gunshot. If that wasn’t startling enough, the man standing in the doorway sends chills down the politician’s spine.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Thomas asks.
The man is large in a way that Thomas hasn’t worried about since before he left secondary school. A lifetime of spending his days surrounded by politicians, fine dining restaurants, and other luxuries means he rarely has to worry about thugs and bullies. As a result, Thomas has not felt genuine fear in a long time. There is something about this man who is so casually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that changes that.
The man does not answer at first, staring long enough that Thomas gets over his shock and reaches for the phone on his desk.
“I don’t know who you are, but security will soon be here and—”
He doesn’t get to finish the sentence. The man storms into the room, grabs the phone from his hand and slams it onto the receiver. He is shaking with rage, his eyes so wide Thomas can see the whites all round his irises.
Deep sucking breaths are being pulled through his nostrils, and he clenches his fingers into fists that slam into the desk. Thomas pushes his chair away from the table as far as he can to get away from this crazed man.
“She’s dead,” the man says, his voice barely a whisper.
“Who is dead?”
Again those fists smash into the table so hard they make his keyboard jump. Thomas shrinks back and hits the wall behind him. There is nowhere left to go.
“You don’t even remember me, you prick.” The man leans in so close Thomas can smell the alcohol on his breath. “My little girl, she died last night after six months in hospital wasting away to nothing because you didn’t do what you promised and voted to keep that plant open.”
Thomas’s eyes widen as things make sense.
Thomas is proud of the fact that in his 30 years of service he has never been part of an expense scandal nor succumbed to the corruption that plagues his profession. He considers himself an honest man and is proud that he is good at what he does. He wants to help people and has been doing a good job for most of his life.
But sometimes life offers temptations that are hard to turn down. Especially when you have bills from a wife who left with two-thirds of everything you have, and you’re only a few years from retirement that looks bleaker now you’re facing it without money. So, when the owners of the Progato Chemical Company approach with an offer that would solve his problems if he just looked the other way, it is hard to refuse. It is a generous offer, especially to a man who worked his whole life just to lose everything in the final hour of the game.
Does he believe the company will actually change as promised? Maybe not… Actually, definitely not. However, that much money can change how you perceive reality. Suddenly Thomas can take the company at its word. As the deciding vote on the bill for a law that would dramatically change the chemical industry in Britain, he puts his own interests above the interests of his constituents for the first time.
His bank balance is healthy again, he no longer has to worry about retirement. Yet for all that, the last year has been the hardest of his life. He has to put up with angry letters from constituents who feel betrayed, and a growing guilt he can not escape.
It doesn’t matter what he does on a daily basis, nor how he tries to make up for it. All that matters is that he has lost his integrity and squandered a lifetime of work.
So as he stares into the eyes of the man who promises violence, he almost welcomes this moment.
“I’m so sorry for your loss. I never meant for anything like this to happen, and if I had known—”
Again those fists slam into the desk and Thomas jumps again.
“Don’t sell me your lies,” he snarls. “I spoke with you in this very office, begging you to make the right decision. Here I am a year later and my little girl has paid the price for you not doing your job. How much did you get for it?”
Thomas swallowed hard, trying to think how to play this. Seeing no possible gain to admitting the truth, he shook his head.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
This time the man sweeps the desk out of the way before lunging at Thomas. Weakened by fear, Thomas doesn’t climb out of his chair quick enough. Soon the man holds him by the lapels of his jacket and is slamming him against the wall.
“Don’t try to sell me that shit,” the man screams from inches away. “Not after what happened to my poor little Amy.”
His voice trembles as he finishes the sentence, nearly breaking down when he says his daughter’s name. An awkward silence follows as the tension leaves him. Now, rather than pinning Thomas against the wall, he is leaning against him.
Again Thomas is out of his depth, not knowing what to do. He wonders if he should hug the man, let him cry this out and get it out of his system. However, he can’t face doing that and struggles to think of something to say as the man fights his emotions.
“I really am sorry about your loss, and I will make it up to you. I have already started drafting the bill that will pass this time, that will help make this right.”
“You think I care now? After my little girl is dead? You think I care about whether that company is open or closed when the man responsible for her death gets away with it without consequences?”
“Now let’s not be hasty,” Thomas says as he recognises the anger building again. “I didn’t kill anybody, I just couldn’t vote on the bill as it stood. You don’t know the full details—”
They were
the wrong words, and the man’s primal scream cut him off.
The tension returns to the man’s arms and suddenly he is slamming Thomas against the wall so hard the breath leaves him and his head cracks against the cold stone. His vision swims, but when he blinks away the dizziness, he trembles at what he sees in the man’s face.
“Please, don’t do this. This will only make things worse. You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison, and you don’t deserve that.”
For ten seconds it looks like his words might have got through to the man. However, reason would not win him the day in the face of the man’s tragedy and his words didn’t carry the weight that was needed.
“Deserve that? Did my daughter deserve the cancer that ate away at her? Did she deserve to die before her ninth birthday? Did she deserve to spend her last months drugged up to escape the unbearable agony of her existence?” With every question he slams Thomas against the wall, each time harder than the last and each time sending Thomas’s skull cracking against that cold stone.
“Did she deserve to lose her beautiful hair? Did she deserve to not see her home in over six months? Did she deserve…”
Abruptly his words trail off and he steps back, letting Thomas go.
Thomas lands on his feet and looks at the man in surprise. For a moment the pain was making it hard to think, but suddenly his head clears and he feels fine.
Strange the man should stop when he was in such a rage. However, when the man looks down at his feet in horror and steps away, Thomas follows his gaze and is surprised to find a near identical copy of him laying on the floor. The biggest difference between himself and this strange figure is the shape of his head, at least on the back. It looks like the skull has collapsed and there is blood everywhere.
He takes far too long to realise what happened and suddenly his mind drifts back to reports of Cardiff, the Borderlands and ghosts. He studies himself, finding no difference to when he was alive, but when he reaches out to touch the wall behind him, his hand passes through it like there was nothing there.
He jumps in surprise, but has no words for what he sees. He is not anywhere near Cardiff and doesn’t have the benefits of a ghost living in that city. Instead, he feels the full impact of his death and realises it is all over.
“My God… What have I done?”
Hearing the pain in this man’s voice, Thomas can’t bring himself to be angry. After a year of guilt, he almost welcomes what this man has done. He truly doesn’t remember what this man’s daughter looks like nor ever meeting him before, and he hates himself for that. He only wishes he could still be alive so he can make things right. But it is too late now…
Or is it?
As he watches his killer flee and a colleague who was also burning the late-night oil come to see what was making all this noise, he is already forgetting about his life and his mistakes, and is concentrating on how he can make this right even after death. He can’t do it here, but there is a whole new world of possibilities opening up in Cardiff. If he was serious about this, it was there he can find his answers.
Looking at his body one last time, Thomas shakes his head in disgust and turns away, understanding instinctively that he doesn’t have much time left even as a ghost. He marches out of the office and starts the long walk to Cardiff.
◆◆◆
The doors returned to their original states. One for Dream, one for Tad’s memories, one for Rodney, one for Thomas, and a space left for Tony.
It was a trying experience going through that again, and Tad felt like he had aged by two lifetimes. No matter how often he experienced it, he would never get used to it. It was so invasive it almost tore at his soul as it opened him up to not only share himself but to absorb what others shared with him.
However, for all that it was overwhelming, it was also a rewarding experience. Even now Tad could feel the memories that weren’t his and knowledge he hadn’t learned. His head felt full in a way it hadn’t since the night of the Merging.
He didn’t have long before he should wake himself and return to the real world, but he took a second to enjoy that feeling and recognise that Tony was right. Tad was more than a dreamwalker, he was a Proxy. It was a part of who he was and he could no more turn his back on that than he could his love for his daughter, nor his desire to be with Stella, nor his guilt over what happened with Joshua King, nor any other part of what made him Tad Holcroft.
When he finally opened his eyes in the real world, he was more himself than he had been in a long time.
More than this, he felt strong.
Not just strong like he did when he merged with Tony, but stronger than he had ever felt. Before the Merging, ghosts made him a little stronger, helped him heal faster, improved his senses, and if he had enough ghosts, let him become like a ghost. However, none of those things were as impressive as what he knew instinctively that he could do now. Before he might have been strong as himself plus the strength of his ghosts in life, now it was like he was multiplying his own strength tenfold every time a ghost was added. He didn’t just feel strong like he could lift a boulder; he felt strong like he could crumble it to dust between his fingers. Strong enough maybe that he could destroy a dreamcatcher.
“Finally,” Tony said, his voice filled with youthful impatience. “Took you long enough.”
“How long was I out?”
“About three days,” Tony said, sounding bitter about that fact.
“Three days?”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. More like an hour, it just felt like three days. Did it work?”
Once again Tad debated the merits of keeping Tony around versus strangling him to a second death. However, he couldn’t forget that it was Tony who had been pushing for this, and he had been right. For all that he was annoying, he was also Tad’s oldest friend and ally. In many ways, with all his changes recently, Tad missed him as much as he missed the other ghosts. He decided to change that going forward, make more time for his ghost and go back to enjoying the simple pleasure of spending time with his family because that’s what Tony was.
However, there were things to do before that, and standing around wouldn’t help get those things done any quicker.
“It worked. However, I could use one more ghost before I give this a try.”
Tony grinned and clapped his hands together, rubbing them excitedly.
“All right then, lets get to this.”
Again he dissolved into mist that Tad breathed in, adding Tony to the ghosts already in his head, and again the change was instantly noticeable. His eyes that were already seeing better in the darkness than they had any right to suddenly looked around at the world as though seeing in colour for the first time. It was still the middle of the night, yet it looked like mid-day to his eyes, maybe even clearer.
He turned his attention to the metal design and floor, a beautiful shape of twisting lines and six-inch steel. It suddenly looked as fragile as though it was made of paper.
He reached for the door in his mind. It was like pushing through syrup. There was a barrier there, but it had none of the integrity of before. Tad pushed harder as the dreamcatcher flared to life, bright light chasing away the darkness. It shone so brightly that Tad had to close his eyes, but even then he could see it through his eyelids. The closer he got to the door in his mind, the brighter the light shone.
The heat coming from the dreamcatcher was so intense it became uncomfortable. He was reminded of being in the oven of Swansea the night he burned his left hand, and the fingers of that hand twitched in discomfort. Tad tried to ignore it as he pushed at that barrier until finally he was through.
It was like popping a bubble. One minute Tad was pushing through syrup and the next there was no barrier and his mental hand hit that door so hard it swung open almost all the way, letting in a flood of Dream that only energised Tad further. This was the first time he pulled Dream without needing to use it, and as that energy flooded him, making him feel like an oversized battery
that was fully charged, sending his nerves tingling in his heart pounding, he realised he had never felt better.
And he wasn’t the only one.
He could feel his ghost’s awe as Rodney and Thomas felt this power for the first time, and even Tony was impressed by how different it was to every time he felt it before.
However, Tad was not a battery and soon the vibration of that energy became uncomfortable and he had to put it to use. He formed an image in his mind, and without even thinking about the consequences, he unfolded that image on reality.
Dream left in a rush and he felt empty without it. However, the strength of his ghosts helped him recover and when he opened his eyes it was night once more and there was no sign of the dreamcatcher. Instead Dream had turned the entire design into a single metal sphere the size of a compact car that was as solid as stone and polished to mirror perfection.
Tad stared at that sphere, amazed it could exist. There had been nothing for him to augment to shape it other than the heat of the metal itself as it melted from the pressures Tad put upon it. Yet for all that he should not have been able to shape it, there had been no more resistance than a slight headache that his ghosts quickly healed.
New possibilities flooded his mind of what this might mean, but he didn’t have time to explore them. He needed to find out what Jacob was doing, then stop him before he went too far.
Turning away from the giant silver ball, Tad changed the channel, bringing his newest ghosts along for the ride.
29
Wednesday, 30th of November 2016
11:55
Jen lay propped up on her bed with her arm draped over Hawk. He was curled up with his head in her lap, motionless but awake. Ever since she returned with her wrist healed, he had been by her side, but had lost all vibrancy. He used to be full of life, always wanting to play. However, since that collar went around his neck, he was a different dog.
