balance.
And fell through it.
He sat up and shivered, finding most of his upper body enveloped in the wood of the pew. He panicked and shuffled back. As his head passed through the backrest of the pew in the next row, darkness washed over his eyes and he let out a moan. He scrambled out like a man escaping a pit of snakes. He got to his feet and drew in sharp, deep breaths, refusing to believe what his mind was telling him. Ghostghostghostghostghostghostghostghost it was screaming at him.
Ghost! You died, remember? Bike accident. You went to Hell and cheated Destiny and now you're back, but you are back as a GHOST!
11
Ricky collapsed to his knees on the hard floor, not feeling its coldness. He stared down and despite his growing alarm and depression managed to wonder how he was able to touch the ground. Shouldn't he be falling through the Earth as the planet was drawn in orbit around a sun whose gravitational pull didn't affect his non-physical body?
Or perhaps the spiritual world existed atop the real world, like two photographs superimposed, and the floor he trod was flush with the real world's floor.
Or maybe the rules of the spiritual world were far more technical than either of these two definitions and he wasn't even nearly qualified to judge them.
He thought of his wife, Alison. Oh God, what must she be going through? How was she coping? Had there been a funeral yet? Had they even found his body yet? He hadn't been dead very long!
Once again panic was Ricky's bedfellow. His wife, his body! He charged down the aisle, heading for the exit, hoping to God (ha ha) that this church wasn't going to turn out to be some kind of prison for him, with walls he couldn't penetrate. He hoped that he had truly cheated destiny and was now a free soul, able to travel and do as he wished. If so, he knew exactly what he was going to do.
Instinctively, he put his hands up to shield his face as the door raced at him. The heavy wooden barrier loomed over him and he held his breath.
Suddenly a moment of darkness as his eyes passed through the wood. Then he was outside; he stumbled with the shock and halted.
He was in the rain, which he didn't physically feel. He stared out over his home town, which appeared like another vast black void except this one had a myriad lights twinkling. And this one he knew.
12
Over the sounds of traffic carving through the puddles on the main road away to the left, beyond the high perimeter wall, and above the sounds of rain pattering the slick cobblestone path he stood on, Ricky heard crying.
He followed the sound and was led around the back of the church, into the graveyard. This was his local church and most likely the place where his body would be interred once they'd actually discovered it. He wondered what it would be like to attend, to see people crying over him.
In the dense darkness of the graveyard, where the only illumination came from the stars, the ghost that knelt before a headstone glowed like a beacon.
Ricky found that he was not scared, not even intrigued or puzzled. Been there, done that, as the saying went. He simply strolled over to talk to the ghost.
She was a child of about eight, dressed in a nightshirt, which made Ricky think she had died in her sleep.
"Hello," he said.
She looked up. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, dripping onto her nightshirt. "Who are you?"
"Nobody special," Ricky said. "Not any more. Why are you here?"
"Visiting my grave. I do so every week."
He nodded. This was a strange conversation for a couple of ghosts in a graveyard. "Why are you crying?"
She looked at the headstone again, tried to touch it. He saw her fingers poking through it. "I want to see me!"
Puzzled, Ricky moved so he was in front of the headstone and was able to see what she transfixed her. Somewhere nearby, they heard a car engine, and light splashed across them, then both sound and illumination were gone as quickly as they had arrived.
The headstone was black with the engraved letters painted white. Lucy Smarte, 12/06/1993 - 2/01/2002. She had died just over six weeks ago, he calculated. Missed forever, forgotten never, it said beneath.
As he watched, she again tried to touch the headstone. There was a metal plaque with a flip-up lid, and it was this she tried to pry open, to expose what was probably a photograph beneath. Again her fingers went through it. More tears was the result.
Behind them, voices. People. People were coming into the church grounds. Instinctively, Ricky ducked behind the headstone. The little girl, Lucy, took his hand. He was surprised to find her grip was warm, very warm.
"Don't worry, they can't see us very well," she reassured him. "That's just in the films. Just dogs can sense us. If you ever heard a dog barking all night long, that's why."
The voices were closer now. Four people, two of them with the low tones of males. Dressed in dark clothing. The taller of the two males had jet black hair with four glinting CDs in it, the hair pulled through the centre holes to create four waxed spires. Kids these days, Ricky thought.
Laughing and swaying, obviously drunk, the four people moved past the pair of ghosts, not seeing them, and collapsed between two tombs, where they began pulling at each other's clothing. Ricky cringed. He understood that some people were turned on by sex outdoors, but this!
He got to his feet. "Not for your eyes," he told the little girl, and led her out of the graveyard.
13
They were sat on the grass beside a bench at the foot of the cobblestone driveway, watching the traffic oozing past. She still had hold of his hand, and he was glad. He was beginning to feel lonely, and didn't want to think about the little girl's situation. Six weeks a ghost. Six weeks alone. He was too curious, though.
"What have you been doing since . . ."
"I died?" she finished, unfazed. He supposed six weeks was long enough to accept your lot, even for a child who'd died and returned a ghost. "Not much. I watch my family. Sometimes it's good to stay up late and to not be shouted at. Just sometimes." Tears were threatening again.
"Sometimes it's boring, though. We don't sleep, we don't get hungry, and I enjoyed both before I?" She hung her head.. "But we aren't going to live forever," she added, as if having read his mind.
"What do you mean?"
"You hid on the bus, didn't you?" He was surprised she knew, but before he could ask, she answered. "We all did. It's the only way. But the Conductor knows and he comes for us occasionally. If we stick together, we can always fight him off."
Conductor? Buses had conductors, people who made sure that fares were correctly paid. He didn't need to ask what she meant, for he could imagine. An agent of Hell who would seek him out and make sure he completed the bus journey that had been planned for him. That didn't sound good.
"You said 'we.' What does that mean?"
"All of us. All the spirits. Everyone who has ever died in this town. We meet up nightly for protection from the Conductor. He has taken many of us back over the years."
"Meet where?" He could imagine it was the town market square. Could imagine them standing there, hundreds of ghosts mingled with hundreds of night shoppers who passed through them obliviously.
"The old Baxter Mine. Lots of mineshafts, lots of places to hide. The Conductor finds it tricky down there. It is our safest place." She looked at the sky. At the moon. "It is nearly time. He will come soon. Must go."
She took his hand, but Ricky shrugged it off.
"What's the matter? Oh, first night, silly me! Family to see? Hope you don't have a dog, though. Will send him insane. Will you come later? To the mine? We have a good time, it is nice."
Ricky nodded. Lucy kissed him quickly on the cheek and then got up and ran out the opened gates, as if she'd forgotten she didn't need to use doorways. She glanced again into the sky and then was bolting across the wet road. Cars whizzed through her. Surprisingly, she cast a fuzzy reflection on the slick tarmac. Then she was gone.
That last look of hers into the sky. It made him think of the Co
nductor. He decided he didn't want to be here another second.
14
Lucy had been right about the dogs, Ricky discovered. The Jacksons, his noisome neighbours, had once again put their dog out for the night. The houses on this side of the street had long, sloping gardens running up to them. Roswell's cage was at the foot of the garden, so he could terrorise passers-by without being too off-putting to his owners. As Ricky stopped outside the closed gates of his own driveway, Roswell did indeed sense him and instantly entered rage-mode. He leaped and gnashed at the four-feet high wooden bars off his cage with its floor of straw, dirty blanket, chewy toy and overflowing litter tray. The dog had never liked Ricky in the first place, but he seemed now to want to tear his enemy's throat out.
"Not gonna happen, mutt," Ricky said.
His porch light came on; a silhouette appeared behind the frosted glass in the front door. Ricky tensed.
The woman who opened the door was a mess. Her eyes were black where her make-up had been smeared, her face red raw from ceaselessly wiping tears away. It was Alison.
She knew he was dead.
"Shut that fucking dog up!" she screamed into the deepening dusk.
He wanted to take her