On the Other Side

  August shook his head to shake the thoughts away, but they clung to him as he trudged home later that night. They niggled in his head when he saw the look of longing on his wife’s face turn to disappointment when he didn’t kiss her goodnight, not because he didn’t want to, but because he’d forgotten how. And when he climbed into bed beside Daphne, those thoughts continued to whir and clunk like cogs in his brain. He got out of bed only moments after he’d gotten in. Daphne sat up.

  ‘Where are you going, August?’

  ‘Just downstairs. My brain won’t shut off.’

  ‘Will you ever tell me what’s going on in there?’ Even though the moon was shining through the window, August couldn’t see her because the sadness in her voice was sucking all of the light out of the room.

  ‘I’m just stuck on a melody for this new score,’ he lied, feeling the bird’s wings flap behind his eyes. ‘Get some sleep. I’ll be back soon.’ And August left before her sadness could reach him.

  There weren’t any silver stars stippling the still black sky, but there weren’t any rain clouds either, and August was thankful for that. He didn’t like rain, although the strange tree at the bottom of the garden drank it up like there was no tomorrow and instead of bearing new fruit, seasonally, it always ripened after a thunderstorm. He and his sister discovered as children how awful the fruit tasted, so they never picked it, just left it to fall and rot in the grass at its roots.

  August stood at the back door of the Snows’ house, a mug of decaf coffee in his hand, looking out at the tree garden. They’d moved into the Snow house shortly after Evie had passed away, in order to take care of August’s Uncle Eddie and his partner, now in their late seventies and in need of an extra helping hand. It was the house Evie had grown up in, and August had thought it could be a new start for him and Daphne. But although things hadn’t become any worse, they hadn’t become better either. August thought maybe they could find what they had lost in this house but all they found were more of his awkward silences and more of her longing sadness. August thought about how much he loved his wife, and wondered how he’d lost the way to tell her. How had he derailed that train, and how would he ever get it back on its tracks?

  He walked out on to the patio and sat down on one of the metal garden chairs, only remembering how heavily it had been raining earlier that day when the water started to soak into his flannel pyjama bottoms. He stood up abruptly, catching his mug on the edge of the garden table. The mug splintered from its handle, plummeting to the ground, and hot coffee erupted over his bare feet. He yelped and did a little dance until the coffee cooled and when it had, he sank back down into the seat, not caring about the water any more, and cried. August hung his head and cried out the feelings that remained in his heart until his tears had mixed with the puddles of rain on the table. His heart cracked cleanly in two and he could have sworn it made a sound that vibrated through the air, rustling the leaves on the strange tree at the end of the garden.

  ‘August?’

  Daphne’s voice was timid and shy, very unlike the voice he’d heard when they’d first met at university. She’d been singing so loudly in the practice room next to August that he’d gone in to tell her to keep the noise down, but when he’d flung the door open only to see this tiny mouse of a girl singing louder and better than most stage stars he’d heard, he’d fallen for her on the spot. He’d ended up inviting her to sing with him while he accompanied her on the piano, something they continued to do every lunch break they could spare for the next five weeks, before he eventually asked her out to dinner. She had always been so tiny and so loud.

  ‘You’re my little oxymoron,’ August would say to her.

  ‘And you’re just my moron,’ she’d respond playfully, and reach up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

  Over the years, however, her voice had quietened. She barely sang any more, and when she spoke, she sounded drained and meek, her boisterousness dried out.

  ‘Oh August.’ She rushed to him and enveloped him in her arms as best she could but her hands didn’t meet around his shoulders. ‘What happened?’ she asked, glancing at the broken pieces of ceramic lying on the paving, but he just shook his head.

  ‘What happened to us?’ he asked, looking at her through tear-shrunken eyes.

  She gazed back at him completely flabbergasted. ‘I thought you’d never ask. I thought you didn’t want to talk about it. I thought you …’ She trailed off.

  ‘Thought I what?’ He hesitated, hoping she wasn’t going to say what he thought she was going to say.

  She took a deep shaky breath. ‘I thought you didn’t care.’

  August collapsed into her arms once more and sobbed and Daphne held on to him tightly, almost as though she was trying to stop him from slipping away. After a while, she shook him gently.

  ‘August,’ she whispered. ‘August, look.’

  Neither of them had heard the thump of wings or the scratching of feet on the table because their hearts were beating so loudly in their ears but when Daphne had opened her eyes she saw him, and she wanted her husband to see him too: a blackbird sitting boldly close to August on the garden table. August pushed himself quickly out of his seat and took a few steps towards the house, almost knocking over a plant pot, but the bird cooed softly as if to reassure him.

  ‘Ssshh! You’ll wake your uncle!’ Daphne hushed.

  ‘It can’t be …’ August whispered, tears still spilling down his cheeks. Daphne instinctively stretched out her fingers to the bird, but August took her hand and pulled her towards him.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘That bird. I dreamed about that bird today when I fell asleep in the practice room.’

  He caught himself too late and looked sheepish but Daphne already knew. She knew he returned to the old university practice rooms when he felt stressed because the red-headed receptionist often called the telephone number they had on file, which was for his mother’s house that they now lived in, just to let Daphne know he’d fallen asleep in one of the practice rooms again and would probably be home late. It wasn’t quite the big secret he thought it was.

  ‘This bird?’ Daphne asked, sceptically.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This exact bird?’

  August nodded, and the look on his face had Daphne convinced. ‘He must be a very special blackbird, then.’

  ‘I don’t think it is a blackbird.’ August recalled his dream, letting the memories run free and they rushed around his mind and through his veins, happy that he’d stopped resisting.

  Cautiously he took a step towards the bird, and Little One took a step towards him. They continued in single steps until Little One was sitting on the edge of the table at the height of August’s belly button, looking straight up at him. August knelt down so they were eye to eye and carefully stroked the top of the bird’s head with his index finger. Then he looked at his finger. Right on the tip was the word home, written in black ink. He looked back at the bird, who now had a little white patch on the top of his head.

  ‘Well would you look at that?’ He sat back on his heels and beckoned Daphne over to take a look and she noted in her head that it was the first time she’d felt included in years.

  ‘It’s ink?’ she gasped, not believing she was seeing the perfectly written little word. ‘May I?’ She’d spoken directly to the bird, who nodded and spread the feathers of one of his wings. Daphne swiped her little finger across a feather, but the wing remained as black as night. She reached across and took August’s hand in hers, gently pressing his index finger against Little One’s wing. Together they caught the words I’ve never loved anyone. She frowned, and this time used August’s little finger to see if there was more to that sad sentence. When she looked at his hand again, she saw like I love you, Evie. She laughed and shook her head in sheer disbelief. More tears sprang to August’s eyes and spilled over, flowing through the tracks his previous tears had made.

  ‘Your mother? That Evie
?’ Daphne managed to get the words out without sobbing.

  ‘I dreamed about her today too. It must be.’ August didn’t care about sobbing. ‘Why don’t your fingers work?’

  ‘Don’t you see? He’s a flying book, full of love notes. Your mother’s secret love notes, and what good are secret notes if everyone can read them? You’ve got Evie’s blood running through your veins, and this little one’ – the bird cocked his head in recognition – ‘must know that.’

  Daphne held August’s hand and read the words over and over, more so that she could just feel his warmth for a little longer.

  ‘We need to wash his wings. He’s been carrying these notes around for years. It’s time he rested.’ August held out his cupped palms, and Little One hopped, happily and trustingly, into them.

  Together Daphne and August cleaned the ‘blackbird’. Daphne fetched warm water and towels, and dug out a blank notebook she had been saving. August removed the ink carefully, word by word, and together they placed them in order in the book. They dropped a few here and there and they spattered onto the kitchen tiles, lost. They worked until the small hours of the morning, until finally Little One was clean. His wings had been restored to their glorious creamy white, his feathers glowed and he was a dove once more. The notebook was full, bursting to the brim with Evie and Vincent’s story, as told through their letters.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ Daphne asked August after they’d let Little One outside, intending to set him free, but he’d only wanted to go as far as the tree at the bottom of the garden.

  He stared at the book lying open on the table, his urge to read it fighting with thoughts of honouring his mother’s well-kept secrets.

  ‘What do you think?’ he finally said and, again, Daphne noted that this was the first time in a long time that they’d had a conversation at all let alone one in which he’d asked her what she thought. Daphne took the open book in her hands and flipped it open to the first page. She placed it gently in August’s hands.

  ‘August, I think you were led to this book for a reason. Please don’t tell me we just worked that hard to recover a story that we’ll never even know.’

  That night, they climbed into bed and started to read, and even though they’d been married for years, they behaved like teenagers on a first date. When their hands accidentally brushed, Daphne blushed and August wouldn’t look her in the eye. They started out reading to themselves, but the further into the story they got, the more of it they read aloud to each other, and as they read, the cold that had gripped their marriage for so long seemed to magically melt away. August even put his arm around his wife and held her close to him, and Daphne’s sadness lifted like rain evaporating into the clouds.

  Evie had to set her tea down on the floor as an odd sensation gripped her chest. Something had started to rattle in there, like a hummingbird beating its wings, and she gripped the arms of the desk chair because she thought she might take off. Then almost as soon as it had started, it stopped. Lieffe looked at her, as if he knew something she didn’t.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

  She caught her breath, collected herself and smiled. ‘Lighter.’

  Her first journey was over at last. Her son had always shown empathy, more so than her analytical, academic daughter, which was why she’d known this secret was meant for him. He also had a strange awareness of the supernatural. Of course when August had woken in the night as a child, scared of shadows that he claimed were ghosts and monsters, and Evie had cradled him back to sleep, she had assured him there were no such things. Had anyone else found a scraggly blackbird in their garden, they would have shooed it away, despite any odd dreams they might have had – but not August. August was a man who believed that everything happened for a reason, and that certain things were meant to be. He believed in fate and destiny, and Evie somehow knew that he’d fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

  Now she was glad his imaginative streak had continued into adulthood because, against all the odds, the supernatural did exist and Evie was very much a part of it.

  7

  horace

  Over tea, Evie told Lieffe the story of Little One. It felt odd to talk about it in such detail, but it didn’t feel difficult any more. Now that August knew, she’d unlocked that door for good. Now to unlock the others, she thought.

  ‘Little One is resting at last. It’s time you did too, so who’s next?’ Lieffe asked.

  Evie rubbed her hands together to generate a bit of warmth. The thunderstorm had left the room ever so slightly chilled and damp.

  ‘My daughter,’ she said with a nod and a stifled smile as she thought of the little girl at four years old, stubborn and pouting with her arms crossed.

  ‘OK,’ Lieffe said, ‘but first, I must warn you before you cross the wall again that time works differently here than it does on the other side. While we move at a leisurely stroll, time on the other side sprints. That’s why life feels so short and death feels … everlasting.’ He sighed.

  ‘How long have you been here, Lieffe?’ Evie asked.

  ‘Oh, I’ve lost count of the years – and the cups of tea,’ he said good-naturedly. ‘Would you like another?’

  Evie shook her head. ‘Could I borrow a pencil?’ she asked, wheeling the chair over to the desk in the corner with her heels. She opened its drawers and found a few odd items: three buttons, a box of paper clips, a safety pin – and a pencil. It wasn’t sharp, but it wasn’t entirely blunt either, so it would do.

  ‘Of course, but why?’ Lieffe called from up the stairs as he put the mugs in the sink of the kitchenette behind his office.

  ‘It’s the next key!’ she shouted, wheeling herself back over towards the wall.

  Lieffe returned to find Evie scratching her pencil against the plaster of the wall, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth in concentration. She was covering her drawing with her hands, so Lieffe couldn’t see what it was. He stood behind her at a distance, curiosity making him crane his neck. Finally she pulled back to reveal a cartoon, no bigger than her palm, of a cat wearing a waistcoat and a monocle.

  ‘Ta-da!’ she said, holding out her hands to frame the masterpiece.

  Lieffe chuckled. ‘Now who’s he when he’s at home?’ He scrunched his face and squinted at the drawing, but it was no use, so he just moved closer, until his nose was almost against the wall, to get a better look.

  ‘That’s Horace. He was a real cat, but he died when my daughter was only seven. She didn’t take it well at all. She cried and cried and would sleep in the spot Horace used to sleep and refuse to move. So I started drawing him for her, and my husband made up stories to go with the pictures. She lived for those stories when she was younger, and we talked about Horace so often that in time she started drawing him for her son, too. In that way, Horace never really died. He lived on for longer than most cats ever do!’

  ‘Is this what will help you find your daughter?’

  ‘Absolutely. Horace was one of the last things we talked about before I died.’

  ‘Looks like you did need to summon the family cat after all!’ Lieffe tapped the Lost Box with the tip of his shoe.

  ‘Yes, but not in quite such a brutal way. This is far more humane.’ Evie laughed and turned back to the wall, but the drawing had gone. She touched the place she’d seen it only moments ago, and the wall responded to her touch by growing fur.

  Actual fur.

  From Evie’s fingers outwards, the whole wall rippled and sprouted ginger fur, right to its edges. Evie couldn’t help but laugh and stroke the soft fluff underneath her hands. She even threw caution to the wind and pressed her cheek into it, enjoying the warmth and the soft purring she could feel reverberating inside the ginger wall.

  ‘Evie. I’d step away from there if I were you.’

  Evie glanced behind her. Lieffe looked slightly concerned, but his glinting eyes gave away his amusement. She took a few steps back to get a good look at the wall, which was now
starting to protrude in the centre and turn black and rubbery. Above the protrusion, two holes appeared and were filled by giant yellow eyes. The fur folded and moulded until eventually the wall had transformed itself into a larger-than-life cat’s face.

  ‘Horace!’ Evie gasped, and laughed. Horace’s eyes widened and he sniffed about the room in recognition. Then he licked his lips and his tongue almost hit the desk chair. ‘I can’t believe this!’

  ‘Neither can I. I can assure you the wall has never pulled anything like this before. This is very … new.’ Lieffe rubbed his stubbly chin and eyed the enormous cat, but Horace just smiled back with his big feline teeth.

  ‘So …’ Evie said, stroking Horace’s nose, ‘how am I supposed to get through the wall with this great cat blocking the way?’

  Horace twitched his nose to shake off Evie’s hand. When she stepped back, he opened his mouth as wide as he possibly could, showing all his teeth and his rough tongue. Lieffe let out a great laugh.

  ‘What? No! No, no, no! I’m not getting in there!’ Evie’s reluctance just made Lieffe laugh harder.

  ‘I don’t think you have a choice, my dear girl. This is how the wall wants you to travel, and I fear it might not take your refusal too kindly.’ He wiped away a tear and gave Evie a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. Horace looked down at her disapprovingly.

  ‘All right, all right,’ she huffed. She dragged her feet to Horace’s bottom teeth. ‘I suppose there’s no other way … is there?’ She looked at Lieffe, hoping maybe he was pulling her leg and she wouldn’t have to go through with this after all.

  ‘It’s through the wall or not at all!’ Lieffe continued to laugh as he sat down in the desk chair, ready to watch the show. It felt like forever since he’d enjoyed himself this much.