by Jon Jacks
He nods, smiling – trust me, Twice, it’s true!
‘Well, I’d be tempted to say it’s just a story, Chris, But if it helped you believe you could bring life back to that girl – who am I to doubt it, eh?’
He reaches forward, hugs me tightly.
‘Thanks Twice; I knew you’d understand!’
I smile back.
I hug him back.
But no, I don’t understand.
I don’t understand anything that’s happening to me lately.
*
Franky’s gran showed up where she’d disappeared from; the casket where she’d been originally laid out in the undertakers.
Much to the disgust but useless protests of the family firm who ran the business, the agency sent in a forensic team in an attempt to find anything that could lead us to finding Franky safe and well.
Somewhere between taking Franky and ending up back in her coffin, however, gran had taken a very thorough shower, giving her clothes a good old-fashioned scrub in the process.
She was no longer hanging around on the borders either; she’d moved deeper into the world of the Nyxt. Perhaps she was already well on her way to merging and becoming one with the spiritual energy there.
Naturally, the newspapers that managed to find out anything about gran going walkabout were discouraged from reporting it. Only the local paper was allowed to cover it, if only to dispel the rumours that a body had gone missing by putting it all down to a macabre student prank.
Besides, the newspaper had something far more interesting to report, a story that no one could dissuade them from running; secret meetings were being held, where a dishevelled boy was raising the dead.
*
Chapter 13
Now that, in effect, I’m working alongside the dead, it has crossed my mind that I should look into contacting my mum and dad.
They’ve been out of my life for so long, I can’t even remember what they looked like, what type of people they were.
From what I’ve heard about Franky’s gran, however, the way she’s virtually disappeared in the otherworld now that she’s moved away from the border, I’ve had to face up the fact that they’re probably still unreachable.
Apparently, the world of the Nyxt makes our own world look small by comparison.
Once a spirit has either overcome or come to terms with the shock of being separated from their loved ones – and realising, anyway, that the chances are they will meet up again one day – they inevitably move deeper and deeper into this new, fabulous world.
As they become more accustomed to this new way of ‘life’, many even give up the last residues of a separate identity, choosing instead to allow themselves to be swept up into the One, transforming into and amalgamating with the spiritual energy flowing through the Otherworld.
It’s supposed to be the most wonderful experience. Though how you can experience anything when you no longer exist as an individual as we know it; well, I’m not quite sure.
When Chris raises the dead, he tries to explain to the clamouring, hopeful crowds that the spirits who move away from the border are beyond his contact.
He insists he can’t go into details – his knowledge doesn’t stretch that far,
His reach doesn’t stretch that far.
He can only contact the recently dead.
And by recent, he means they died at most over an hour ago.
There’s another reason for this insistence, he’s told me.
If decay has set in, it will continue. Only at a slower rate than if the body was left without its spirit.
He explains to the growing crowds, packing out the halls, spilling out of sports and scout huts, that he can’t prevent a disease continuing to rampage through a body.
Limbs that have been lost cannot be restored.
He begs the people clamouring for his help to bear this in mind.
‘Would the one you love really want to live once again in the body you bring to me?’
Still, though, as Chris had originally prophesised, these desperate, distraught people turn to him for help even when the body they bring along has only been made presentable by the undertaker’s art.
He has to patiently explain time and time again that a post mortem has destroyed any chance of a resurrection, as indeed has even the slightest setting-in of rigor mortis.
Still they insist that he should ‘work his miracle’.
Still they complain that he has no right to deny them what they ask for.
Still they assure him that the risen person won’t mind inhabiting a body that no sane person would want to stand close to.
Still they accuse him of being ultimately responsible for their death – for he has the power to bring them back to life and he has refused.
Thankfully, any resorting to aggression are immediately and if necessary forcibly ejected from the meeting by Chris’s swiftly increasing band of reverent, worshiping followers.
These come only to see the resurrections.
It is enough for them.
Chris is the saviour.
He himself is the Risen.
*
‘Ah, so you’d heard about these meetings too eh, Twice?’
Suddenly, Jake is sidling up to me.
We’re at the back of the hall, the place I prefer to be as it’s farthest away from the frenzied, emotional clamouring and delirious swaying that always surrounds Chris.
‘You should have let me know rather than trying to stop it yourself.’
‘Stop it?’ I say, just before it dawns on me what he means.
He doesn’t know that I know Chris.
He thinks I’ve heard about this meeting the way most people hear about them – on the grape vine, people whispering details yet swearing the listener to secrecy.
He thinks, too, that I’ve come here in my role as courier.
It’s my duty to stop something like this – a tampering with the borders between life and death.
‘He’s bringing people back to life,’ I whisper quietly to Jake. ‘Haven’t you seen all the ecstatic faces around you?’
Faces that will turn to angry ones if they overhear us talking like this.
‘And you think that’s fine do you? Tampering with the Wyrd?’
‘The weird?’
‘The Wyrd, spelt with a ‘y’ – the Life-Force, in other words.’
‘Life force?’
‘See? You still don’t know enough about all this, Twice, to go making all-embracing claims that bringing people back to life is a good thing. What about if people just started tampering with the weather, just making this day hot, because we’re having a barbeque, this day rainy, cos the garden needs it; don’t you just think there might be some serious knock-on effects? Because it’s all connected, of course; just as the Wyrd links everything to do with life and death.’
He’d stared directly at me, his eyes hard and penetrating, while he’d talked.
Now he turned away, looking up towards Chris once more.
‘Trust me,’ he says sternly, ‘we have to stop him.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I know you can’t – but I take it you mean you won’t?’
I nod. With another nod, I draw his attention back to Chris.
‘I know him. Chris. He’s my boyfriend.’
Jake’s mouth hangs open in surprise.
He turns to me, a look on his face I could interpret as disgust, unbelieving astonishment, or a request for me to tell him that I’m joking.
He shakes his head, mouths a silent ‘Jeeezus’.
‘It’s not just me,’ He says. ‘The Nyxt will want to stop this too. Better we stop it than them.’
He turns to me.
‘A better chance that Chris comes out of it alive.’
People have heard us. They’re glaring at us, nudging other people around them.
Some of them are drawing closer. They’re angry.
‘We’d better get outside’ I warn Jake, pulling him with me as I quickly head for one of the exits.
‘I’ve seen it before,’ I explain as we dip outside into the night. ‘The police have got wind of some of the meetings; tried to break them up. Some of the people here see it in similar terms to attacking a church – no, worse. More like you’re trying to snatch salvation away from them. I think some of them would be prepared to kill to protect Chris. He always escapes, anyway.’
The moon’s full, lighting up the alley we’ve come out into in a hazy, silvery glow. We could be underwater, the way everything around us seems so unreal, the walls and rubbish bins merging with the grey sheen of the illuminated air.
Above us, there’s a wild fluttering of wings.
Jake looks up, startled, anxious.
‘Uh oh!’
‘Pigeons; a cat probably disturbed them.’
‘Could be.’
He says it, but doesn’t sound like he believes it. He still seems on edge.
‘What?’ I snap in frustration. ‘So now you’re saying you can read pigeon movements, like some sort of ancient soothsayer?’
‘If you see circular ripples in a pond, you don’t have to see the thrown pebble that caused them to know they didn’t just appear out of nowhere.’
One of the birds falls from the sky, landing with a dull thud on a nearby roof.
The one immediately behind it falls next, hitting the ground limply.
The others wheel off.
‘Dead zone!’ Jake barks urgently, pulling me back. ‘For the moment, it’s the domain of the dead.’
He looks up at the moon like he wants to curse it.
‘Don’t move Twice! Anything entering the zone will fall down dead!’
*
Chapter 14
Nothing was really distinct in the diffused silvery light.
Yes, it created hard shadows there, brightly lit other things here; but it was a landscape of few tones, such that objects naturally seemed to blend, merge, and take on an unfamiliar shape. Bright sunlight would give them the colours that separated them. Darkness would transform them into black but thankfully formless shapes.
Here, the light was ideal for playing tricks with your imagination.
If I thought my control was wavering, I instantly looked away before the shapes took on a more figurative form.
What had Jake said? If you think you see movement in the corner of your eye, then you probably did.
He’d also said that, when it came to the way kids always think there’s something hiding under the bed, in my case there probably had been.
Great!
Figures are forming in the middle of the alley, well away from any object. They’re forming in the shimmering haze of the light itself.
‘Jake! Sorry! I was trying my hardest not to see any figures out there!’
Jake rewards me with a bitter sigh.
‘Don’t worry, Twice. This wasn’t down to you. It’s a moon river – a river of soft light that makes it almost impossible not to see shapes in. It’s a natural gateway. The Nyxt can move into shapes that wouldn’t be anywhere near distinct enough for them to use normally.’
What had been columns of shimmering light sharpen and harden, taking on more and more definition.
They’re more like actual figures than any others I’ve seen.
‘Jake; this has to stop.’
One of the figures authoritatively takes his place at the head of what could be a rough triangular formation, the rest hanging back. Even so, they still manage to give off an air of menace, of barely controlled anger.
Me and Jake, we’re the complete opposite, as we’re obviously confined to the shallow porch arching the exit door.
We’re not sure where the dead zone begins. We’ve got to stay where we are.
Jakes makes the best of it, standing up straight and proud beneath the alcove, like he’s transforming the crude brickwork into a portal to the world of the living. And he’s the one barring the way.
‘Andrew,’ he says in greeting.
Once again, I don’t know how Jake knows it’s Andrew. Even in this new, more defined form they’ve taken in front of us, they’re all still pretty much the same as far as I can see.
Perhaps there are odd differences between the way they look that I’m not yet used to spotting. Or maybe it’s down to the way they speak.
‘We’re also here to stop it, Andrew,’ Jake says. ‘We know this shouldn’t be happening.’
Even I can tell that Andrew isn’t impressed by Jake’s comment.
What passes for a scowl passes across what passes for his face.
‘You Jake? You and this girl?’
He observes me scornfully over Jake’s shoulder.
‘Do you really think you can bring a halt to this? A crowd drunk on miracles?’
‘All we’d be doing is equalising things out,’ another spirit says. ‘Many have returned to the world of the living from the realm of the Nyxt. We’d only be taking some of the living by way of recompense.’
‘All we have to do is extend our temporary domain.’
As he speaks, another indicates the way the silvery light ends against a row of rubbish bins. Two dead cats are sprawled across the floor, while a third cowers fearfully in a darkened corner.
‘There’s no need for that!’ Jake holds his ground. ‘This is our domain–’
‘That’s intruding into ours!’ Andrew snaps back
The second spirit to speak has drawn closer towards the alcove. He’s studying me intently, like he’s casting his eyes over a work of art he’s about to buy, checking for any signs of fraud or fakery.
‘This girl?’ he says. ‘Is she the one responsible?’
Jake shakes his head.
‘No; she’s our courier.’
‘Courier?’
He says it like he’s spotted the fake artist’s signature. He turns to Andrew.
‘There’s something not right about her; something–’
A piercing shriek comes from the hall behind us.
More screams follow, and angry or amazed shouts.
Jake whirls on the step, about to rush in – then he spins back once more, his hand raised as if that alone can somehow block the entrance of the dead.
‘Andrew, please,’ he pleads. ‘I’ll halt it. We can discuss this later.’
Andrew appears unimpressed. He begins to move closer to the porch, a sure indication that he’s going to follow us into the building.
Strangely, the figure alongside him reaches out, touching his arm.
He glances up at me, then turns back to Andrew.
He shakes his head.
‘All right Jake,’ Andrew says. ‘But if you don’t immediately put an end to all this, we will act ourselves.’
He and the others turn as if to walk away.
Instead, they just fade out of existence.
*
What had been a clamouring, excited crowd was now a fearful, seething, surging sea of bodies.
The police had arrived in force, rushing into and amongst the crowd like dark, frenzied sharks.
They had obviously heard of the meeting, and figured out where it was being held.
Perhaps Jake himself had arranged for them to be here.
As Andrew had pointed out, how was he expecting to bring the meeting to a halt with nobody but me to help him?
The police hadn’t managed to reach the stage yet, however. Although most people were fleeing them, many had actually rushed into the attack, lashing out with fists and broken chair legs.
He was leaving behind a weeping, ecstatic family on the stage.
‘Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord!’ the oldest man amongst them intoned dazedly.
Carefully, they helped the recently risen woman unsteadily make her way across the stage.
She mumbled confusedly.
‘No, no! What am I doing here? No no!’
I understood her distress.
Her body was gawky, her legs bent ungainly, no doubt by the accident that had killed her.
Maybe Jake was right; maybe people shouldn’t be brought back from the dead.
*
Chapter 15
‘Why?’
I didn’t hide my anger.
‘Why raise that poor woman Chris? She was…she wasn’t capable of walking on her own!’
‘So, are you saying that the otherwise-abled shouldn’t be given the chance to live again?
He nonchalantly breathes a temporary gust of life into another of his origami creations, this time an elephant that jerkily walks off.
‘What? No, no…’
I don’t know what I’m saying.
‘It…it doesn’t seem right, somehow!’
‘Somehow? That’s hardly a strong argument, Twice. Besides, her family were insistent. Anyway, wasn’t I the one who originally said this would happen?’
A paper butterfly takes off from his cupped hands.
‘Raising the dead is illegal. It’s necromancy!’
I was merely repeating what I’d heard the police say to people protesting their innocence as they were taken away from the meeting in handcuffs.
Chris chuckles.
‘Does that law still really exist? If it does, it’s got to make you wonder how much the authorities have known all along about the possibilities of bringing the dead back to life.’
He turns to me, his eyebrows rising quizzically.
‘How come you don’t get it on the NHS, eh?’
‘Why aren’t you taking this seriously, Chris? I’ve told you about my job – this guy Jake, from where I work, I told him you’re my boyfriend. He wanted me to tell him where you lived; I had to fob him off, saying you could be anywhere out on the streets. That you wouldn’t meet up with me now you’d seen me with him, with Jake.’
‘Good, good.’ He smiles at me. ‘We wouldn’t want to be moving on again, would we?’
‘Jake’s not going to leave it there if these meetings continue Chris! He’s always Googling me as it is!’
‘Googling?’ he laughs. ‘I think you mean ogling, Twice.’
I slap him playfully.