The Physics Of The Dead - A Supernatural Mystery Novel

by Luke Smitherd

  If that bastard could do it, I can bloody do it.

  Eventually he'd gotten better, and come out the other side, but that night had scared him badly. It made him realise again-just from a different perspective-what there was to fear here. But it wasn't as bad as The Train; this was different. This had been in the mind only. After The Train had been in...everything.

  What Bowler actually said in reply was:

  “I can't lie, Hart. You know what it was like. You must have been through it. And without knowing you could come back to me if you wanted. Before now, I mean. It was...it was bad. But I've been through worse.”

  Hart nodded, and was about to tell him he knew, but it was at that moment-for the first time in 60 years, not seen remotely on a TV but in the actual flesh and close enough to touch-that a Bluey walked right by in front of them.

  After a second of shell-shocked silence, Hart whipped around to tell Bowler to come on-not that it would have done any good, as he suddenly couldn't speak-but Bowler wasn't there. He was already up and running after the Bluey.

  ***

  “I'll find you...after.” says Hart, though he knows Bowler isn't listening. He's gone, staring along the length of carriage C through eyes that no longer wish to see.

  Hart's impulse, unusually, is to grab Bowler. He wants to reach in through the wall of the train and pull Bowler out, to make him stand on the platform beside him whilst the train pulls away, to keep him safe. But Hart doesn't. He looks at his friend through the scratched glass window and tries to find the right words to send him on his way.

  Bowler's jaw is set firm, though his bottom lip is working up and down, twisting into a grimace, then falling loose as his head rolls back on his shoulders to stare at the ceiling, eyes closed, forehead raised in despair...then the determination sets in and the whole process begins again. It's like watching an animatronic dummy.

  Hart looks up the platform, seeing the station masters (were they still called station masters?) checking with one another. The train will be setting off soon. Hart isn't happy; this is not a good time to be doing this. Grief was the worst kind of motivation for it. The pain after will be bad enough, but to go in with such turmoil in the mind...is bad. Hart looks at the figure partially covered from view by a NO SMOKING sticker and worries that he won't come back. Not that Bowler could break The Foyer-Hart knows that won't happen-but that Bowler will not come through this as himself.

  No. He'll make SURE Bowler is all right.

  And it occurs to Hart that he might as well start walking now. If he's not going to stop Bowler, he actually NEEDS to start walking now. It'll take a good 15 minutes minimum, and Bowler will be done a lot quicker than that; Hart needs to be there as soon as Bowler finishes, and he has a good idea of where he needs to be.

  He hesitates for a moment, struck by a sudden stab of pity. Bowler doesn't deserve any of this; and it was about to get so much worse. Infinitely so.

  “I'm going to get going then, Bowler.” Hart says, uncertain. Bowler doesn't turn his head.

  “Bowler? Okay?” Still nothing. Tears rolling down cheeks that tremble slightly, a mix of rage and sadness. “Can...can you hear me Bowler?” Is that a nod? Yes, it's a nod. Hart raises a hand, begins to lift it towards the carriage wall, and then draws it away. “Good luck, then. Just...well, I'll see you in a little bit.”

  But then the whistle blows, and Hart curses himself for leaving it this late. He'll have to run the whole way now to get there, and it won't really be soon enough. Idiot.

  As the doors begin to slide noisily shut, Bowler suddenly looks at Hart through the window, fear briefly breaking through his grief. What he's looking for Hart doesn't know, as, in a moment he will return to in his mind for years to come, he can't meet Bowler’s gaze. Hart looks at the floor until the carriage begins to move.

  What happens next, Bowler will never fully remember; he will recall brief flashes, and there will be one particular part that he can never forget, no matter how much he wishes to.

  But what actually happens is this: the train begins to move, and to his surprise, Bowler's mind goes blank. Whether it's from his determination, or his focus to keep himself anchored in his seat, or a combination of the two, he forgets about everything else, about all of the pain, and it's a blessing. He looks through the window of carriage C and sees the wall of the station bridge slope away, sees the grass of the embankment begin to run past faster and faster, and for a bizarre moment he feels like he's just another passenger. He feels like leaving The Foyer will be as easy as taking a daytrip to London. Supersaver return, of course.

  He can hear the conversations around him, the metallic rat-a-tat of the drum and bass music in the kid's headphones two seats away. He can hear the two West Indian women behind him talking about the price of the tickets. He can hear a man explaining to someone that he's probably going to lose signal in a second because the train is moving, A woman coughing. He's just another person going to the NEC, to Birmingham International, to Birmingham New Street. He’s going to try looking around the Bull Ring for a new pair of jeans, to see if he can find a little something new, going to buy a present for...and his focus wobbles, and he pushes thoughts away.

  He can't feel anything different, though, and after a minute of nothing, he almost relaxes slightly. They must have hit the Wall by now, surely? The train has now reached high speed, and the frighteningly quiet feeling of pace, the tiny bumps as it shoots forward over the tracks, the slight rocking of the other passengers...these things, along with his own nerves, make him feel like the train is moving at 200 miles an hour, when he knows it's really probably only something like 60 this early in the route. But even so...it's been a while...and the Foyer isn't that big...could there be something different with him after all? He knows Hart said everyone thinks that, but they think that BEFORE they get on the train, and here Bowler is. He’s on it, and he's fine.

  He's waiting for a tug, a pull, an impact, anything, and it's not coming. He looks out of the window for a landmark he recognises, but it's all embankment and hedges, a wall of random greenery. He actually sits back in his seat for a second, not relaxing, just perplexed. This is easy.

  Something isn't right.

  He hears a kid screech in the seat behind, and in a moment of utter shock, he feels the kid kick the back of his seat, and his current confusion is so intense that it's not until he hears the mother telling the children to sit still that he realises HE FELT THE KID KICK THE BACK OF THE SEAT.

  What? He FELT that? How did he feel the kid kick the seat? What the hell is happening? And how did the kid kick it so hard that he's bent the seat out of shape-it has a solid plastic back-but he must have done, because he can feel it all different against his back, and that when he looks down and sees that his stomach and buttocks have actually pulled back into the seat itself, and the pressure on his chest that he hadn't noticed-it wasn't as sharp or sudden as the one in his lower back-begins to increase, and he sees his whole torso descend into the seat back.

  All his senses kick into overdrive as he realises he's hit the edge of the Wall, has done a while ago, and didn't even feel it. But now he does. His hands begin to shake rapidly, but, thinking quickly, Bowler closes his eyes and WILLS his torso out of the seat. It's not too hard, as the resistance isn't enormous, but almost as soon as he's got his form under control, he feels the pushing sensation building up rapidly.

  He's thinking too fast to be truly scared now, despite the realisation (I'M IN IT, I'M IN THE FUCKING WALL, I'M IN THE WALL, THIS IS WHAT HART WAS TALKING ABOUT, I'M GOING TO BE HURT, I'M GOING TO BE HURT SO MUCH, OH GOD) that he's in The Wall now, that this is where the fight begins, and with that realisation all Bowler’s thoughts turn to locking this in. This is what he thought when he boarded the train, what he thought when he decided to try; that he is going to be able to push through, because HE will be able to take it further than anyone else. He'll do it for her, for himself and for her, and he grits his teeth and feels the push settle in.
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br />   It's now enormous, suddenly ENORMOUS (OH GOD HOW IS IT GETTING THIS STRONG SO FAST) before he has time to comprehend it. It's a wall of solid force all around him. It's more than gravity, more than a feeling of G Force or weight, it's actually THERE, it actually has a physical presence now. He can feel it pushing against his features. It feels like a blanket of fine fibres, like a blanket stretched across the entire carriage, and it feels so solid that he knows that if he were to lift his hand he would be able to stroke its surface, to feel the fibres under his skin. It's tightest on his knees, but feels the worst on his nose-pushing the tip slightly flat-and now Bowler realises that he is now locked in, unable to move or stand if he wanted to. To do so would mean a shift of focus, and at this level of pressure he can't do that at all; he would be pushed straight through the seat and out of the back of train, which even now is picking up speed and forcing him harder, HARDER against the Wall.

  All that's keeping him in it now is his own will, keeping him locked in the train as it thunders forward, and for the first time he fully doubts himself as the pain begins at his nose. He feels it and just has time to realise with horror that this is where it gets really bad as his nose starts to flatten, spreading the pain outwards across his eyes, and round to his temples, round the back of his head and suddenly his whole head is on fire, then his neck, chest, stomach, legs. It's a burning pain, like each individual fibre of the Wall, the super fine cables that surely must make it up, are slicing their way into his skin and squeezing him flat, like the solid wall of some enormous, terrible, fibrous hydraulic press. And still Bowler pushes.

  If he could see himself, Bowler would see his entire body flattening smoothly, and to the thickness of a magazine. He eyes feel like they are boiling now, and he can no longer see through pain and pressure. He would be screaming but he can't; it's like trying to make your hand work once your arm's gone dead. And there's a sudden thundering in his ears, rapidly rising to a deafening roar, like bubbles rushing past your eardrum underwater, only LOUDER, and now it's agonisingly loud. The pain reaches a crescendo as his body flattens and his skin begins to split, peeling backwards on his arms and flying out behind him like streamers on a kid's bicycle handle.

  And still he pushes. It's all he can think to do.

  And suddenly, Bowler feels something snap.

  And the pain stops.

  For a moment, the relief is so complete, total, and indescribably wonderful that Bowler bursts into hysterical tears.

  He then stops almost immediately as he realises that he can't. He can't because the pressure is still there, only pain free. It's an impossible weight on his entire body, but it's like he's aware of it on a different level. No pain means it's comprehension only; Bowler knows there is huge pressure, and he cannot move, and that is all he is aware of on the subject. His panicked mind can't grasp it, as well it shouldn't, for even his rational mind would struggle.

  He opens his eyes, with difficulty-now the pain is gone he can see, but the sheer force makes it hard to get his eyes open-and looks to see what has happened. The train is still moving-if anything, at its greatest pace yet-and the people are all still there, oblivious and reading magazines, listening to music, staring out of the window, talking to or ignoring the people they're sharing a seat with, not wishing to talk to a stranger.

  Bowler watches for minute, squint-eyed, trying to get what's happening. What the fuck is going on? The thought slowly comes to his battered consciousness; did he make it, then? What happens now? Straining, juddering, his manages to work his forehead downwards, slowly craning his neck against the pressure to look down at his body. It's not down there.

  His body, from the neck downwards, is spooled out along the length of the carriage behind him, like silly putty stretched thin. It continues all the way to the wall and disappears through it. He can only assume that his legs are somewhere on the other side of the carriage wall, but it's hard to say where because his clothes have disappeared now (this realisation comes to him through his freshly returned terror.) He's just one long stream of flesh, pale pink chewing gum, and he's stretching even further. He can see the thin length of rubber that is his body drawing thinner and thinner, stretching out as the train progresses, and he crazily thinks of that guy from the comics, the stretchy guy with the rock guy and the other ones, and he struggles to get his mind under control as he knows he has to make a decision; let go now or keep going. Is this another stage to get through, like before? Is it? Bowler frantically tries to get his head together, a feat near impossible whilst seeing your body drawn out behind you like hot toffee. WHERETHEHELLAREHISFEET

  And the answer comes to him as the question is made; they are back where the pressure began, where he hit the wall. He's stretching. But maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe if he holds on, he'll snap back, he'll stretch that far and pop through, maybe that's how you do it! How you MAKE it! But...he could pop back the other way. But so what? He'd only be back where he was bef-

  Suddenly there's something else. Something else that comes in as his body is now stretched so thin that the stream of flesh behind him is less than a foot wide. What is it? A feeling. A prescence. A change in the air, the atmosphere, but it's something...it's in every fibre of his being, and it's growing. It's something big, something vast, something incomprehensibly enormous...something he's only just brushing against, getting a sense of, but it's growing, and he's more aware...

  He looks around the carriage, and sees he's the only one feeling it. Of course he is, he KNOWS he is, but it's still so weird to be feeling this and have no one around even bat an eyelid, and now his vision is changing. As that feeling grows in him-what the hell is it, he can't describe it-his vision starts to change, and everything seems a bit more...hazy. Harder to see. Like the contrast on a TV being turned down, slowly, and the colour just being that little bit less THERE, and then he realises what the feeling is.

  It's not something growing, it's something leaving. Everything is becoming less. The pressure on his body is still there, but it's going because the feeling in his body is as well, and his sight...his thoughts now, he realises, not words, just feelings, awareness, dimming to instinct, and now the lights are getting darker and it's only because his thoughts are simplifying, that there's nothing to look at because EVERYTHING IS GOING that he finally understands what he's brushing up against.

  It's not something crazily big after all. It's the other end of the scale entirely. Every cell of his body, every instinct in his mind now KNOWS this, as certain as anything he has ever known in his life, and he knows this because he is rushing into it, stretching away into it. It’s too big to comprehend, NO, not too big, too NOT-big, too NOT there, it's a nothingness so all-encompassing that if he understood even a fraction of it then his mind would cease to exist.

  It's oblivion, and Bowler is on a speeding train heading straight toward it.

  It's the worst thing he will ever know.

  Bowler's eyes roll over and-with a horror that takes a piece of him that never will return-he unlocks, he lets go.

  ***

  Hart caught up with Bowler in seconds, just as the Bluey stopped outside the newsagents next to the cobbler's, fiddling in her purse for something. She hadn't gotten far; the two had sat in shock for only milliseconds, and she hadn't been walking at any particular pace.

  This Bluey was a woman in her mid-50s, well dressed, probably on her way to work. Sensible skirt with black boots, matching a short black suede jacket. Dark, greying hair, worn short, revealing a pair of stud earrings. High features that, though still elegant and attractive, would have turned many more heads 20 years ago.

  But neither man gave Shit One about any of that. All they cared about was the pale blue glow all around her. Seeing it up close was a breathless revelation for Hart. He could barely keep himself under control, for here was change, here was only the second new thing to happen to his world since he'd arrived, the first being tuning in permanently with Bowler. It was a hint, a clue, a way of understanding. It was
the single most exciting thing he had ever seen. Had he looked down, he would have noticed that his self-control had disappeared so much that his feet had sunk into the concrete.

  The blue aura was constant; there was no flicker, no parts where it was stronger than others. It was completely even, and though the colour itself was pale, it had strength, a thickness to it that was unmistakable. It made no sound, and to Hart it looked like it was made of some magic, solid plastic that could move in whatever manner the woman did. Aura wasn't even the right word; that was the first one that came to mind, the first word to describe light around a person. It wasn't a glow; it had an edge. A clear, definable edge, an outline. It was more like a blue layer, hovering just above her skin and clothes.

  Both Hart and Bowler moved slowly and simultaneously, reaching out their right hands to touch it. They caught each other’s eyes as they did so, and Bowler looked for approval, despite the fact that his hand kept going. Hart nodded, looking into Bowler's wide eyed expression with a matching one of his own. Bowler was clearly shocked and excited, but despite this, Hart could see the younger man was taken aback by seeing Hart looking the same way. Understandable, though Hart. There'd never been a moment when Hart had seen anything like this, had felt like this, so God knew he must look different. He felt like his legs were going to give out under him, his chest rising and falling at breakneck speed as he took rapid imaginary breaths. He was so light headed he thought he might faint-even though he knew it was impossible here-and as he looked back at the Bluey, seeing his hand about to touch one, to TOUCH AN ACTUAL BLUEY, he thought he may finally Go Loose when his fingers reached it.