The Ghouls

by Fred Crawley

  CHAPTER 44

  NATHAN STOOD IN THE DOORWAY TO THE KITCHEN and watched her cooking. She was wearing a revealing bra and knicker combination that was, quite frankly, too dangerous to cook in. He had bought them for her a year ago and she’d refused to wear them. That evening he had arrived (appeared) at home, unlocked the door and found her standing in the middle of the living room in nothing but.

  His first thought had been that he’d caught her in the middle of an affair. He even looked around for someone and the name Marcus sprang to mind, but he didn’t know where from. But that was a ludicrous over-reaction, he saw it in the way that she came to him and put her arms around his neck. She kissed him seductively on the cheek and then they were on the living room floor doing what came naturally.

  She hadn’t taken the lingerie off afterwards either but had continued to prance around the house wearing it. Nathan could feel himself getting excited all over again just from watching her.

  It was dark outside now and the windows reflected them back at themselves. Nathan stared at it for a moment until it occurred to him that this was the sort of place that Aude was likely to appear and he looked away. He felt silly for being so paranoid and wondered if there was any truth to his fear that he might be crazy. In real life, other people didn’t just appear in your reflection. That was the sort of scare tactic reserved for tacky horror films.

  He stood beside her and kissed her cheek. Gwen turned to look at him and smiled cutely. Nathan wondered... and then he stopped. What was the point of torturing himself? He was with the woman he loved, he was happy. Whatever the reason for it he should just be grateful and accept it. Plenty of people never achieved what he had.

  Nathan turned to kiss her again and when he opened his eyes, they were in the living room. Gwen was still wearing her coat and he was carrying his briefcase.

  “What was that for?” Gwen said.

  “I just felt like kissing you,” Nathan said.

  She smiled and kissed him and then they were outside, walking along the street hand in hand. The evening was cool but not cold. There weren’t many people around which made it even more obvious that they were being followed.

  When Nathan glanced behind him, he saw Aude walking along with a small dog on the end of a lead. When he turned forwards again, he saw her walking towards them dressed as a police officer. He thought she was going to stop them and say something and he felt guilty even though he had nothing to feel guilty about. He turned to look towards the houses and saw Aude standing in a garden wearing a big summer hat with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.

  “Is everything alright?” Gwen said.

  “What?” Nathan said. He turned towards her. “Yeah, of course. Isn’t it?”

  “You seem a little jumpy Nathan,” Gwen said.

  He thought that if anyone had a right to feel jumpy it was him but before he could say as much everything changed and they were no longer walking along the street together.

  They were in the middle of a party. There were men and women carrying drinks around and picking at food that had been placed around the room. He looked down and saw that he held a glass of white wine in his hand. He took a large gulp thinking that getting drunk was probably the best way to deal with the strangeness that he was experiencing.

  “Excuse me, could you pass the chips,” a woman said.

  Nathan turned to look at the woman and saw that it was Aude. He stepped back and almost knocked over a vase of flowers. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

  He stood with his hand on the table opening and closing his mouth and one by one everyone in the room turned around to look at him. He supposed that he was making quite a scene, but he didn’t care. He cared even less when he saw that all of them, men and women alike, all had the same face. Every single one of them was Aude.

  The vase fell to the floor with a crash and that broke his paralysis. He glanced around the room for Gwen, but she wasn’t there. His first thought was that he must be dreaming, but it all looked and felt real.

  “These chips?” Aude said.

  Nathan shook his head. He had to get out of there, with or without Gwen.

  He ran for the door and pushed past the other Aude’s. None of them tried to stop him, but they got in his way all the same. He made it through the door and out of the room. The front door was right in front of him and he ran for it.

  “Nathan, wait!” Aude called, which one he couldn’t be sure. “Nathan, come back.”

  Nathan pushed open the front door and ran. Outside a cool drizzle had started to fall and he was soaked in an instant but he didn’t care. He ran as quickly as he could, even though he had no idea where in the world he was.

  He kept running, his feet splashing through puddles and droplets of water stuttered in the light as they fell. There was no one else on the street, but he knew she was there somewhere. She seemed to be everywhere.

  “Nathan you’re being silly,” Aude said.

  He ran straight out of the street and into the school playground the following morning. There was no one else around, all of the windows were dark and lifeless. Something about the school seemed different, it was smaller somehow, but this was Thornhill, he was sure of it.

  Aude was standing in the middle of the playground wearing the black dress with the red belt that she had worn when he had first met her... no, that wasn’t what it had been. He hadn’t really met her before, he had seen her, sure, and then he had dreamed about her. He hadn’t really met her yet and he would do everything he could do avoid doing so now.

  He backed away from her until he felt the school gate behind him. Then he fumbled for his keys but realised he didn’t have any pockets. When he looked down, he saw that he didn’t have any trousers at all. He was completely naked below the waist. The sort of behaviour that was likely to get him arrested in the school

  “What do you want?” Nathan shouted.

  In the blink of an eye, Aude disappeared from the playground and reappeared standing right in front of him. She smiled and he felt cold.

  “I want to help you, Nathan,” she said.

  “I don’t need your help,” he said.

  She tilted her head to the side and smiled kindly, but he felt as if she was mocking him. “I think you do,” she said. “And I think you know it.”

  Nathan shook his head again. He was holding onto the blue metal bar of the gate so tightly that his hands were starting to hurt. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Are you happy here?” Aude said.

  “What sort of question is that?” he said. “Of course I’m happy here.”

  “Even though...”

  “Even though what?” he demanded.

  “You think you’re happy?” Aude said.

  “I am happy,” Nathan said.

  The school vanished as if he’d stepped off the edge of the available world. A moment passed and he seemed to see the frayed edges of reality before he opened his eyes and found himself on a rooftop.

  “What just happened?” Nathan said.

  “This isn’t real Nathan,” Aude said. She walked towards him and this time she was wearing a skin tight black body suit. If Gwen had been around he would have looked away but she wasn’t and he didn’t.

  “What do you mean this isn’t real?” Nathan said.

  She kept coming towards him. Her face was a calm smile. When she reached him she kept going, he turned to watch her as she walked to the edge of the building and then climbed onto the wall that surrounded it.

  “What are you doing?” Nathan said. He could see the tops of other buildings and feel the wind against his face so he knew that they were up high.

  Aude turned her head to look at him, but she didn’t stop walking. With a passive smile, she stepped off the edge of the building and disappeared from sight

  CHAPTER 45

  NATHAN APPROACHED THE EDGE OF THE BUILDING CAUTIOUSLY. He had never liked heights and felt uncomfortably like he might throw himself off the
building after Aude. He kept a few feet away from the edge and looked over.

  “I told you this wasn’t real,” Aude said.

  Nathan looked at her with disbelief and then down at the street which seemed to be hundreds of metres below. Aude was floating above it calmly as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He stepped back from the edge.

  “How did you do that?” Nathan said.

  “You know how I did it,” Aude said, rising up and then coming to rest of the wall that surrounded the roof. “Don’t deny it, Nathan.”

  He shook his head. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.

  “Are you happy here?” Aude said. She started walking towards him and he wanted to back away but found that he couldn’t.

  “What do you mean?” He wanted the world to change again, to put him back in the kitchen with Gwen where he could just pretend this hadn’t happened.

  “What I said,” Aude said. “Are you happy here? Has anything bad happened?”

  “No,” he said because it was true, nothing bad had happened since he’d woken up in bed next to Gwen a few days ago. In fact, the worst that he could say about it was that Aude kept appearing.

  “That’s because none of this is real Nathan. This is all a dream.”

  He knew at once that she was right and wondered how he could have ever thought otherwise. Of course, this was a dream. It was all just too perfect for it to be anything else. But even as he thought it he couldn’t remember what real was. If this was a dream then where was he really? No doubt it was somewhere unpleasant, otherwise he wouldn’t be clinging to this with such eagerness.

  “What if I don’t care?” Nathan said.

  This time, Aude looked at him with confusion. It felt to Nathan like he had been standing on the rooftop for longer than he had been anywhere for a long time. Surely things should have changed by now, he should be somewhere else in some other situation that he would barely have time to take in.

  “What if I would rather stay here than go back to wherever it is I am?” he said. “Did you ever think of that? If I’m happy here why would I want to go somewhere that I’m probably unhappy?”

  Aude looked at him but she didn’t say anything. It might have been his imagination (and if this really was a dream then it was all his imagination) but she seemed to be fading slowly into nothing. He could see the taller buildings behind her, through her.

  “Maybe I’d rather stay here,” Nathan said.

  “Don’t say that,” Aude said but there was barely any volume to her words.

  “I’m happy here so why don’t you just leave me alone?”

  The wind whipped up and he could feel his hair flying around his head. He didn’t want to leave Gwen and he had a nasty suspicion that if he went with Aude she wouldn’t be there. He was happy here.

  Aude opened her mouth and appeared to speak, but Nathan couldn’t hear her above the gathering wind. She continued to fade until there was nothing left of her and he could see the blue sky beyond. He expected the scene to change, but it didn’t. After a while, he became aware of some distant noise and he turned around to walk away.

  CHAPTER 46

  NATHAN WALKED THROUGH THE QUIET STREET NOT QUITE knowing where he was going. It was familiar but different, as dreams often were. He didn’t recognise any of the buildings or places that he saw but at the same time he did. There were other people on the street with him, but their faces were indistinct blurs and he found that he couldn’t focus on them.

  If he kept going then, he knew that he would reach home eventually, that was always assuming that he didn’t just appear somewhere else in the meantime. He thought about what Aude had said to him and he knew that it was true, but now he began to doubt the things that he had said to her. Had he really meant what he’d said? Was it really better to live in a dream world where you were happy than in the real world where you weren’t?

  He managed to avoid thinking about how he had ended up in this dream. What he had said to Aude about that was more than likely true: something unpleasant had happened and now here he was, more than that he didn’t need to know.

  The street seemed to dissolve around him. He was fully aware of it now as if it was happening in slow motion. He saw the road and the buildings become translucent and beyond them there was the house that he lived in with Gwen. It was a big old house which didn’t seem quite right but hell, if this was his dream, then he could live wherever he liked.

  The front door was open and he went inside.

  Gwen was sitting in the living room with the television on and her feet up on the sofa. She glanced at him as he came in but evidently wasn’t concerned by the lateness of his arrival. It was possible, he realised, that she hadn’t noticed at all. From her perspective, he might have been and gone a dozen times that he couldn’t remember.

  Except that wasn’t really it at all, was it? It wasn’t that she was a separate entity at all and he wasn’t jumping forwards through time as it appeared. If he was dreaming all of this, then it made sense that he was only imagining good times. She wasn’t upset with him because he didn’t want to imagine her upset.

  He sat down on the sofa opposite her. She smiled at him.

  “Is everything alright?” she said.

  Nathan wondered where he really was, whether Aude was a part of his imagination or a real person. Was Gwen real or had he imagined her? The confusion that he felt upon asking such questions was familiar, but presumably everything was familiar here. If this was his own head then maybe Aude and Gwen were just agents of his own consciousness.

  “Nathan?” Gwen said.

  He looked at her.

  “Are you okay?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  She switched off the television and leaned towards him. “Has something happened?”

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  She nodded. “Of course you can. What is it?”

  He wondered how to frame the question, but he supposed it didn’t matter. Maybe if he just thought about it, hard enough she would answer him. She was only there in his imagination anyway.

  “You can ask me anything you want Nathan,” she said. “You know that, right?”

  He supposed that he did. “If you had the choice between living in a wonderful fantasy that wasn’t real or in a terrible reality what would you pick?”

  Gwen hesitated for barely a moment, but he noticed it. Then she replied: “I’d rather have a beautiful dream than a horrible reality,” she said.

  Despite his suspicions, Nathan was surprised by her answer. “Really?” he said. “Even though it wasn’t real?”

  “Would it feel real to me?” Gwen said. “I mean, would I be able to tell the difference or would it be like one of those virtual reality things?”

  “Let’s say you could tell the difference but you could pretend you didn’t know.”

  She thought about it for a little longer that time. Her forehead wrinkled. “I suppose I’d still take the dream.”

  “Even though it wasn’t real?” Nathan said.

  Gwen shrugged. “It’s as real as I want to make it, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  Nathan looked at her for a while longer but he had already made his decision. There wasn’t really much of a decision to make. After a moment, he stood up and walked across the room. He bent down and kissed her on the head.

  “What was that for?” she said.

  “Because I love you,” Nathan said. Whether she was real or not it didn’t matter, he still loved her and it felt good to say so. “And I’m going to miss you, wherever you are.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gwen said.

  Nathan ignored her. He opened the front door and found himself walking back out onto the roof again. Aude was standing in the corner smoking a cigarette and looking over the edge.

  “You came then,” she said.

  Nathan nodded. “Are you real?” he said.

  “I’m as real as y
ou want me to be,” Aude said.

  He thought about Gwen. He wondered what sort of world he would be going back to. Would it look anything like this one or would it be completely different

  “Just shitting you Nathan,” Aude said. “Lighten up.” She was looking at him now. He tried to smile. There was no smell from her cigarette. “I’m real, but you’re not talking to the real me. Do you know what I mean?”

  Nathan nodded. “How do I get back?” he said. He imagined her telling him that he would have to climb over the wall and throw himself over the roof. That would be a real test of his faith in this being a dream. His stomach was doing summersaults just thinking about it.

  “You’ve just got to open your eyes,” Aude said.

  “My eyes are open,” Nathan said. But even as he said it he knew that wasn’t true. His eyes were closed like a giant dome over the world. If he opened them, then all of this would vanish in the light from another reality.

  “It’s okay,” Aude said. “I’m waiting for you there.”

  “But you won’t remember any of this?” Nathan said.

  She shook her head. “None of this is really happening.”

  The decision was easy: he preferred to live in an uncomfortable reality than a beautiful delusion. Acting on the decision was more difficult.

  Suddenly Aude was standing beside him. She squeezed his hand and it felt as if they were both really there. “On three?” she said.

  Nathan nodded. They counted together: “One... two... three...”

  CHAPTER 47

  “NATHAN! NATHAN!”

  HE OPENED HIS EYES AND THE world came rushing back in. His eyes seemed to take a long time to adjust to the darkness of the tunnel. He was laying on the ground staring at the wall and there was a tremendous noise, like a train racing towards him. And Audrey shouting.