I could not see it, I could not feel the link, but somehow I sensed that it had snapped like a long, finely drawn rubber band and the result was that I had been propelled forward, my invisible head almost smacking my invisible knees. It was a terrible, fear-inducing jolt and I was suddenly cast free of myself, the metaphorical umbilical cord that held both parts of me together, body and soul, had been sundered.
I had an equally sudden vision of that man in the darkened room cutting the cord with his long-bladed scissors. Impossible, of course, but somehow I couldn’t shake the image from my mind. I began to panic.
Could you lose the connection with your own body? Could you be cast adrift? I had no idea – I was a lone pioneer as far as OBEs were concerned; I certainly had no knowledge of others who practised it, although I’d read the few books written by people who claimed they had mastered the technique of leaving their own bodies to become entirely spirit; but nothing they’d said covered this eventuality. I was scared, terribly scared, and I wanted to get back to my body without delay.
Normally, that very thought would have effortlessly sent me home to my body within moments; but this time I had to will myself deliberately to return. I flew from the house and along streets rapidly enough, but I had to negotiate the route, will myself along, whereas before there was no conscious effort, I just arrived back in my body without thought or direction. A couple of times now I even got lost, became confused, had to force myself to slow down and think of where I was and where I had to get to. Luckily, I knew the city well, so it was no great problem to return to the Knightsbridge hotel; the difficulty was having to think my way there.
And then I arrived, gliding upwards to the tenth floor, through the thick wall, into a lengthy corridor, sinking through the closed door to the suite I shared with Oliver, coming to a jerky halt in the lounge where all my layouts and Ollie’s copy ideas littered the floor. I felt more fear as I glanced towards the open doorway to my bedroom, wary of going in, deeply anxious about what I might find.
I suppose some kind of homing instinct had brought me here, but now I felt nothing. No, I did feel something – I felt adrift . . . dispossessed. I moved towards the open doorway.
I’d left the two wall lights on above the bed when I’d half-drunkenly collapsed onto the large double bed and I could see what remained of my body lying there on top of the covers. The blood was horrendous. I mean the amount of it. The human body holds, what? Eight and a half pints or thereabouts, and it looked like most of it had spilt out of me. You know how it is when you drop a bottle of milk? It seems to spread everywhere. In the bottle it doesn’t look that much, but on the floor? It’s like a dam just broke.
My blood soaked the quilt on which I lay and what wasn’t absorbed ran over the edge of the bed to puddle the floor. There was even blood on the wall behind the headboard, great arcs of it, drooling streams, as well as dramatic splatters. It resembled art from a Jackson Pollock red period.
My eyes were slightly open in the scarlet mess that once had been my face and the pupils were like unpolished marble, frozen and lacklustre. I was dead, well and truly dead.
14
Whoever had murdered me had left me unrecognizable; if not for the hair and blood-soiled clothes I wouldn’t have known myself. Wait, I got that wrong: it wasn’t the hair or clothes – I just knew the body was mine; although the link had been broken, I wanted to get back inside myself, pure instinct overriding logical thought. I wanted to put life back into my body no matter how mutilated it had become.
Usually, intention did not come into it; I just arrived back, kind of slipping inside like a hand into a glove, a foot into a shoe. But now I had to force my spiritual self to step into the mess and gore that was my former self, into the clumps of sliced flesh.
Squatting over my remains, I lowered my spiritual butt into my physical pelvis; then, after a moment’s hesitation, lay back like a vampire into a coffin.
Unfortunately, whereas at other times I’d merely melded with myself, returning to flesh and bone an easy and smooth accommodation, I now seemed alien to my own substance. I fitted okay, but I did not adhere, did not become myself again.
I found myself lying loose inside an empty desecrated vessel. And every time I tried to move, I failed to stir my flesh; my spiritual self just parted company with its host. Frustrated and in deep despair, I began to moan.
I had no idea how long I stayed there, endlessly sitting, then lying down, trying to ‘think’ my way back into my body, because in the OBE time has no proper meaning, no value at all, unless you related to a living event played out before you, but I think my endeavours went on through the night and into the morning.
One of the strange things among all these other strange things was that there was still a residue of thought left inside my battered brain; or maybe it came from my body as a whole, as if all that was experienced through life etched itself into the very meat and bone of our being, perhaps even ingraining memories into our tissue and sinews, the very texture of our bodies. Maybe the brain isn’t the all of our thinking.
I caught glimpses of other moments in my life, never fast, yet not clear images as before, almost reflections of events and people, some from long ago, most more recent. The strongest were of Primrose and Andrea, but Oliver was also there amongst them, and so was Mother. But they were all too insubstantial and I was too distressed to pay them much attention.
I was panicking by now, desperate to fill myself and having no success at all. No matter how mutilated, I wanted my body back. I wanted to be me again. I began to pray and pray in earnest, even though I’d never been religious during my lifetime – my God, my lifetime: I’d already given it time span – but that didn’t prevent the hypocrisy now; I prayed as if I’d been a devout religionist all my days. Help me, Lord, I begged, beseeched – whined – and I made outrageous promises about my future actions should my existence so kindly be extended. Church would be my second home, good deeds my second nature. Just another chance, dear Lord, I’m really not ready for this. And remember, dear God, I’m a Catholic.
Yet I kept asking myself through the blathering, was I truly dead?
I didn’t feel dead. But what would I know? It was a first-time experience. Why couldn’t I see the talked-about bright light at the end of the dark tunnel? Where were the deceased relatives and friends who were supposed to welcome me over to the other side? Where were the angels?
All I saw was the walls and furniture of a luxurious but impersonal bedroom in a hotel suite, a TV inside an open cupboard in one corner, a built-in wardrobe in another, long windows with fancy heavy drapes to the left. Neither heaven nor hell. Purgatory then? Could be, I supposed. I’d learned about purgatory in my junior school, which had been run mainly by nuns (I’d attended a Catholic school, even though my mother aspired to no particular religion, and learned that purgatory – if the place existed, which I always very much doubted – was an intermediate place where the soul sweated for purification of sin. But nobody had told me it might be a hotel room).
No, that couldn’t be it, because I wasn’t really dead. If I were, I’d know it, right? Anybody would know it. I mean, there’d be no doubt, would there? Unless, of course, I was a ghost. A lost, confused ghost. Wasn’t that what ghosts were meant to be, the lonely spirits of those who couldn’t accept that their bodies had ceased to function and they were now adrift from it? Troubled souls who didn’t realize they were outstaying their welcome in this world? Nah, not me. That was stupid. Death had never bothered me either as a concept or a reality: when your time came, that was it, no sense in complaining. Move on. Don’t look back. Time was up. Yeah, easy to be pragmatic when it was just a notion for the future. We all know we’re not immortal, so how come death rarely figures in our plans?
This was the kind of pointless argument I was having with myself as I tried desperately over and over again to win back the flesh and I guess it could have gone on endlessly had not the telephone next to the bed rung.
&nb
sp; I made a lunge for it, forgetting I had no substance, and my hand went straight through the plastic and interior workings so that I unbalanced (yep, you can still do that even without a body) and ended up on the blood-soaked carpet. I swore – under my breath if I’d had a breath – and held up my arms in despair.
Although I had no sense of time, I knew it was still late night or early morning because it was dark outside save for the street lights. Besides, when I looked, the digital radio/alarm clock on the bedside cabinet told me it was 1.55 a.m. So who could be ringing me at that hour? Oliver, phoning to apologize for his behaviour earlier? I doubted it. My copywriter’s strops could last for days, sometimes weeks when he was really in a sulk. So who then?
Andrea. Her and Prim’s images leapt into my mind. Andrea would certainly ring if something was up at home. Or maybe she had expected me to ring her last night, as I always did when I was away. I invariably checked if things were okay with Prim and Andrea before dinner or around bedtime (my daughter’s bed-time), but tonight – last night, to be accurate – I’d been too engaged in hassles with Ollie to remember. There might not be a problem at home, I thought, calming myself to a degree, because my wife was aware that I’d probably still be working late into the night, so she wouldn’t be disturbing my sleep. I hoped that was the case as I studied the still-ringing phone.
It stopped abruptly, but I continued to stare. She’d given up, but would be worried that I hadn’t answered. What the hell could I do? I certainly couldn’t phone her back. One more try at the body. You never know, it could just work this time.
I rose and knelt on the bed, gazing down at my mashed face and the sight made me feel sick to my non-existent stomach. I didn’t avert my gaze though. Even if I could get back inside and take control, tap out my number on the phone despite blood-drenched and now misaligned real eyes, how could I speak to Andrea without a discernible mouth? I’d only spit gore and loose teeth into the mouthpiece.
Shit in a bubble bath, what the fuck was I supposed to do? I roared my anguish, a sound no living person could ever hear, and I sobbed into my hands. What had happened to me? Why had it happened to me?
Understand that the thing which makes you a person is not the flesh and blood, but the mind – not the brain – that lives within the shell. It forms the personality, the philosophy, the instinct and perception, the very nature of the man or woman or child themselves and I’ve learned over the years that this is what you take with you when you leave the body. It is you, and when you’re in spirit or OBE you perform just as though you’re in the physical. You close your eyes, you weep, you feel fear, you feel joy, you feel all emotions as usual; and you dress yourself as you would in life, your mind creates the phantom material; as mentioned before, you can experience desire, but because your mind is aware there can be no physical expression, it necessarily becomes unimportant. Your mind also reconciles other senses, so that you can hear, touch (but not actually feel – it’s all to do with perception), obviously see and you can speak, although no one else will hear you (in fact, all those senses are inexplicably heightened, because no longer are there physical defects or dulling limitations). I guess it’s all to do with the mind convincing itself – no, wait, it has to be stronger than that. Possibly it’s because the mind is the reality, all other material things non-existent or irrelevant, unless accepted by the mind itself. I’m no philosopher, never was, but it makes some kind of sense to me. Let’s just say I existed in the sixth sense, which does not preclude all of the other five. Taste is missing and so is smell. Just like in dreams, in fact.
But the main point I’m making is that even in my spirit form I acted exactly as if I were occupying my body as normal. I could sit, lie down, walk, run, jump. And on top of this, I knew I could fly, float, pass through walls, and think myself to other locations.
So now I kneeled on the bed and wailed. I was frightened and lost and had no idea where I was supposed to go from here. I was homeless; I had no body and no tangibility.
I cried for Primrose and Andrea, and I cried for myself. God, I even cried for Oliver and Sydney, my friends and business partners: what were they going to do without me, who would get the work done? I cried for my mother. We didn’t get along anymore, but what was she to do with me gone? She’d lost one man already, her husband, and now me, her son. Self-pity mingled with commiseration for my friends and family as I hugged my self there on the big, blood-ruined bed, rocking backwards and forwards on my knees, and all the while the demolished face of my old self watched me with crooked glazed eyes.
It took some time, but eventually I began to calm down. I wasn’t all-cried-out just yet – I knew more tears would be shed later – but I gradually became aware that staying here with the wrecked meat and bone that once was my human form was pointless. Besides, I felt an urgent need to see my wife and daughter once more, because maybe there would be no other chance; if I was dead (and let’s face it, all the signs indicated that I was) I might have only this last chance before I went on to the place where all souls go (I began truly hoping there was a heaven after all).
Before my life expired, merely the imagined picture of a location was enough to get me there almost immediately; I was always aware of my flight, but it usually went by so swiftly it hardly felt like a journey. This time, however, I consciously had to make the effort of leaving the hotel room by passing through the thick outside wall into the night. Once outside I had to follow a route to my home that I knew, transportation now a considered thing rather than just a wish-fulfillment. I was strangely chilled as I travelled, as if a breeze was flowing through me, even though I had no physical outline to capture its draught, and my journey was by short body-hopping movements, casting off with either hands or feet to float some distance before sinking to the ground again. It was like the recurring dreams I used to have where I never could quite fly above the earth completely, my own pragmatism allied with gravity drawing me back to solid ground each time. Those astronauts who had walked the moon must have shared the same experience.
The London streets were quiet, the occasional lonely lorry or all-night bus passing me by; only a few cars were about, their headlights dipped. There were people here and there, sometimes in small groups as if they had left late-night parties or clubs together (this was the weekend, I reminded myself) and I avoided them without knowing why. But on turning a corner and briefly grounded at the time, I ran straight through a person who had been about to make the turn from the other direction.
It was the weirdest feeling, because for an instant I was almost part of the stranger. Alien thoughts poured through me, not quite visions and certainly not manifestations, but thoughts, representations of people the person must have known. There was a fraction of a situation too, an altercation between two women, neither of whom was particularly attractive, over the person – a man, I assumed, the guy whose body I’d trespassed on – himself. There were other things too, as if this pedestrian was carrying the baggage of his whole life around with him, but these were confusing and easily relegated by the two-women scenario. Then it was gone and I was in open space again.
I felt suddenly drained, slightly nauseated, as if my invasion was punishable – or perhaps too much to handle – and I came to a halt. Turning my head to watch the man’s retreating back, I saw that he also had stopped and was looking behind him towards me, a bewildered expression on his lamp-lit face. I thought he might even see me and I unconsciously raised a hand in salutation, but of course he stared right through me (literally).
He shuddered, a jerky spasm, a feeling of someone walking over his grave, I guessed. And I felt the same way too, although I didn’t give a shudder. The man turned and went on his way, disappearing round the next corner, leaving me perplexed and no less afraid for myself. It was an unpleasantness I intended to avoid in the future. If there was some kind of future for me.
Resuming my journey, I discovered I could no longer float quite so easily. I realized much later that I was becoming used t
o my situation, my state-of-being, and the familiarity appeared to set its own limitations. You see, this was not entirely the OBE of before, when I had a proper life. No, I was now in some kind of limbo, unattached but still linked with the former life. Somehow, this condition imposed certain restrictions and I was yet to learn what they were. I guessed that the more I accepted and adapted, the less freedoms I would have, reasoned thought perhaps setting its own boundaries, if only to a certain extent.
The journey home was one of the worst I’d ever undertaken; I was in grief and I was frightened and confused. Only the image of my loved ones, Prim and Andrea, kept me from sinking into an invisible whimpering heap on the pavement. This can’t be death, I repeatedly told myself, this can’t be the consequence of dying, the next stage, the step through the door; this couldn’t be the after-death existence most of us hoped for. If it was, where were all the other souls? If I was a ghost, where were all those who had preceded me? Anyway, I didn’t feel like a ghost. Disembodied maybe, but I certainly had not left this place on earth. Where was the Big Judgement those nuns in junior school had promised me (or, more truthfully, threatened me with)? Where was the eternal peace and joy we were supposed to expect, and where was God’s all-embracing love? Or was He having a laugh? (Yep, by now a little anger was creeping in and that was no bad thing – somehow it gave me a bit more focus.)
I went on, at one moment boiling with rage, the next tearful with despair. Never had I felt so alone. I longed to be with my wife and daughter again and I kept willing myself to be home, hoping that the willing would work as it always had before, so that just the thought of Prim and Andrea inside our house would take me there instantly as though the mere desire would act like some futuristic transporter vehicle, a Star Trek machine without the electronics and dazzling light particles. It wasn’t to be though and I wandered the streets like (literally again) some lost soul.