Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “You’ve got awfully knowledgeable, Gran.” She didn’t remember her that way in life.

  “Cheeky brat. And watch out – I can read your mind when it’s that clear.”

  Georgia ginned. “That’ll be hard to control. There’s such a lot to get used to. Yet I’d expected stranger,” she said, reaching out to push open the door. Inside the sun blazed as brightly as out, and few shadows enclosed the interior.

  “Strange would frighten most of us,” nodded her father. “So we arrive on this particular level immediately after death and then sleep in the hospital, like you did. But we’re all individual. Some sleep longer.”

  “And,” frowned the elderly woman, “there are other levels. This is the seventh.”

  “That’s intriguing,” Georgia turned, interested. “So what happens to Hitler and Jack the Ripper? There’s a Hell?”

  “Fiddle faddle,” interrupted her grandmother. “There isn’t any Hell. But souls gravitate to their own natural level, so yes, the more degenerate, they go where the plane suits them. The lower planes – one – two – three. I’ve never been that low I’m glad to say, and don’t intend visiting.” She sniffed, lifting her chin. “No, I wasn’t shunted onto the lower planes, I’ll have you know. I came straight into the seventh like most do. But everyone climbs out of the abyss sooner or later, with help of their guides. Plane by plane. Hitler might be up here by now though I doubt it. There was a pope who recently turned up here from the sixteenth century. It took him that long to get up from the second plane to the seventh.”

  “A pope? Don’t tell me, I can guess.”

  Her father nodded. “But he’s a nice chap now. I met him. Very cheery. You only get here when you’re ready for it.”

  “But we aren’t perfect yet. That’s in the higher planes yet to come.”

  There was neither kitchen nor bathroom, but a bedroom was furnished with a huge bed, piled with quilts and velvet covers. The larger living room was distinctly familiar, the bedroom was not.

  Her grandmother said, “Just stay and relax dear. We’ll leave you to find your own peace. When you want us again, just call. In your mind, that is. Want us, and we’ll hear you automatically.”

  “That’s better than the telephone.”

  “It is the telephone over here,” said her grandmother. “The mobile phone inside the head. Well, thank goodness, since I never could use those nasty mobile phone things. Couldn’t see those horrid little numbers. Now there’s no number needed. Telepathy comes naturally here, I’m glad to say, though most of us prefer to carry on speaking aloud when we’re in company. Old habits. Well, like I said, this is the plane of familiarity.”

  “So one day we’ll move up levels too?” said Georgia. “Into higher realms? When does that happen?”

  “When we’re ready for it,” nodded her father. “But that’s probably a long way off. Especially for her.” He nudged his mother, who sniggered. “And there’s an awful lot, really a wonderfully immense unbelievable variety to discover here first. No point me describing things. You’ll find it all in your own time.”

  “So there’s time?”

  “Piffle, my dear. No clocks. No calendars. But linear direction, and – well – don’t try and know everything at once.”

  “We don’t know it all yet, tell the truth.”

  Both her father and grandmother were fading from the doorway. “Have a rest. We’ll be back.”

  They had gone. “Have a rest!” Georgia smiled to herself. “Even though I’ve only just woken up.” But she did. She found a stretch of cream linen couch and curled there, gazing through the window into the greens of what appeared to be her own unfenced garden beyond.

  Then, although her view remained framed by the outline of the window, once again Georgia discovered her sight extended, becoming unlimited, stretching onwards across valleys and lakes, encompassing a dreamscape of endless beauty, peace translated into physical presence. The semblance of the physical, but with fewer boundaries. Willing or wishing something within the natural state of the plane, apparently made it so. So she wished herself outside, and was.

  Without movement, neither walking nor with any conscious withdrawal from one place or arrival in the other, she had put herself in the position of her intention. Wish brought consequence. She was standing in her own garden, if that was truly what it was, drinking sunshine directly from the air, grass like shimmering velvet beneath her toes. Behind her the low angles of her house created no shadows. In front, there was a pond with the singing bubbles of a spring. Georgia walked over to it and sat at the edge, dipping her fingers into the water. Her reflection shaped within the ripples, her own face smiling back up at her from green spangles. “I wonder,” she thought, “if you can ever be lonely in these Summerlands. I’ve never, ever had to live alone before.”

  “You have questions,” said a voice. She was startled and looked up.

  He was a stranger. The sheen of his face and the depth of his eyes seemed more intense than her father’s or grandmother’s, even more so than the doctor she had met at the Halfway House. Since everything here appeared to mirror its state of spiritual being, she guessed at once that this was someone more developed than herself. She was immediately shy.

  The man shook his head. “Not really more developed,” he said, though they were her thoughts he was answering, since she had not spoken aloud. “Having been longer here, I recently moved up into the ninth plane. My vibrations are those of the ninth, but I choose to come back to the seventh as a guide, for a while at least. You had questions, so I heard, and came.”

  “Gracious,” whispered Georgia. “I shall have to be careful what I think about in future.”

  “Our thoughts are still a jumble,” said the man. “Mine are also incoherent and aimless unless I focus. It is only need, or intention, that creates automatic telepathy. My name is Norwen. From now on I’ll come whenever you call.”

  Georgia smiled. “What a service. I suppose you already know my name.”

  He nodded. “And you were contemplating loneliness. It’s impossible here you know. If you want company, your need becomes a call, and your family and friends hear you, and come. Now I’ll often keep you company. I’ll teach you what you want to know, and that will smooth your passage through this plane and onto the eight.”

  She was enchanted. “Thank you.”

  “But there’s something else,” Norwen said. “You see, your greatest friend here will be yourself. You’ll discover a sense of inner being far stronger than you ever could while alive. Every aspect of life here will reflect yourself back to you, inspiring self-knowledge on a level you could never appreciate before. Your home is an echo of yourself, your surroundings, everything you see will in some way be representative of your personal potential. Your entire existence here is an inner pathway deeper into your own spirit. Perhaps it always was in life, but the passage was disguised by lessons, tests, responsibility and challenge. Here, there’s no disguise, once you can see beyond your old habits and memories. We talk about the planes in consecutive numbers, as if a soul’s journey is upwards, but that’s only figurative. In truth, your road is ever inwards. We all arrive, some moment in the distant miracle still far beyond us, at prefect self-discovery. That’s the ultimate plane here. Which is, of course, God.”

  Georgia sniffed, her comprehension confused. “I was never religious. The different religions cause so much trouble on Earth. The man I was in love with believed in religion, but I couldn’t see it.”

  Norwen smiled “Most religions are man’s attempts at understanding his deep spiritual concept of the Creator, and to reach the love and acceptance of a higher force while learning what is expected of him, and what is right and what is wrong. Overly strict religious laws bring a sense of security to the fearful, but the true state of God the Source is far beyond the comprehension of any of us, either alive or here.”

  “Then I’m not expected to understand that yet?”

  “Of course not,” Norw
en said. “None of us can. But supreme love lies at the kernel of our inner beings, and it’s that we grow into here, plane by plane. We gradually become our own spiritual potential.”

  Georgia remembered conversations with Romano, when they’d discussed belief. She’d laughed about his ideas of Heaven. “No demands? No need to work? You won’t even get dirty? So what do people do? You don’t believe in wings and harps, but for goodness sake, there must be something to do that matters. Otherwise it would just be so damned boring.”

  And Romano had said, “But perfection can’t ever be boring.”

  “It will be a long time before you discover perfection,” smiled Norwen. “But certainly, boredom is impossible. Such a state has no validity here, because our minds are constantly travelling towards the understanding of our own absolute individuality. In the lower planes, where deep distortions of the soul still need to be overcome, then boredom may be possible as a learning tool. The avoidance of thought which can sometimes be achieved there, may appear temporarily boring, being a state of purposeful dullness. But you will never avoid thought or you would not be arriving on this plane.”

  “Well,” said Georgia, “I’m extremely glad I didn’t book in lower down.”

  With the energy of the healing sleep still strong in him, Primo sat on the cliff edge and watched the river crash from the rocks into the valley below. He had questions but he refused to acknowledge them. If he allowed any sense of need to take coherent focus in his conscious mind, then the fucking do-gooders would be bound to turn up, all bright faced and shining with pissing enthusiasm. They’d offer him their glossy little hands and try and lead him into fucking righteousness. God forbid. And that was the trouble. God, wherever He was hiding in this miserable hole, wasn’t forbidding any damned thing, which was why this great afterlife of His was such a pissing disappointment and why Primo’d be damned if he let the do-gooders, the eighth and ninth plane rubbish, bugger in and lord it over him, telling him what to do. He’d hated those self-righteous twits in life and they weren’t any better in death. He’d do whatever was needed himself, as he always had.

  So he turned his thoughts to Warl and Pigseed and the others, which fired up antagonism instead of holy lectures on love and forgiveness, and then squatted down to a cosy hour or so of bad temper. His harpy spread her wings, blotting out the high glare of the sky, casting a round, ragged blue shadow over his face. It was something she did, in a motherly fashion, when she knew his eyes hurt him. They were hurting now because his face was not yet fully healed, and also because, figuratively, he refused to see and had turned from the light.

  The gang had been larger when he’d first died and found himself on the third plane, confused and cross. In fact, death had left him positively startled. He had expected neither the dying nor the continuation of consciousness afterwards. He had ‘always maintained that death was it – the bloody end – black blank sod-all afterwards, and forget all the silly religious nuts. He knew the truth. One big zero. And that’s how he’d wanted it. Yet had been – as usual – cheated. So, figuring out there was no sodding peace even for ghosts, he had hooked up with the first group which had offered him friendship and some interesting activity.

  Then, gradually he’d realised how boring it all was. Without the need to do anything in particular, not to steal nor to eat, no need to work nor to rest, fuck it, not even to wash or shave or shit, fighting seemed pointless. His motivation quickly dissipated and a furious dissatisfaction was all that gave him energy. The gang’s raids through the fog- banks, though their inherent unsuitability for the higher plane kept them confined to the border lands, began to press on his mind. Instead he fell in love with what little he saw of the fourth plane, its crisp high cliffs and their solitary frost. High, cold and clean. A few others of the group moved on up, usually without explanation or goodbye. The breeze took them, and they left, smiling like kids with a chocolate cake. Primo had hoped it wouldn’t be too long before it happened to him too.

  He found that the fourth was a plane of birds. As he followed the attacks into the hills, so he left the others to their battles and wandered off to talk to the eagles. Since he could now fly himself, he chose to fly with them, learning from them how to soar and roll and hover. He drifted on the thermals, eyes upwards instead of intent on the groups of third plane refugees below. Then, quite suddenly, he found he had become part of the higher plane himself. So he settled in the border hills leading into the fourth, and built his first real home. The birds often stayed with him and loved him back.

  Primo would allow himself no further reminiscences. Thinking way back beyond death to his previous life was not something he permitted himself. All that stuff about your old life rushing past your eyes wasn’t going to happen to him. There was something horrible, a golem, a memory he refused to remember, and all the dreary nonsense about what a living shit he’d been. Instead he now contemplated the nuisance of Pigseed’s raids, and how to combat future war without future pain. It was during this exceedingly satisfactory indulgence in resentment and nourishing anger that Primo decided to look in on the people he was busy hating. It might help to know that they were hurting as much as he was. Immediately he shook off the thought shadow and rose vertically into the air. The harpy followed and they flew together, his hand on her neck, her left wing beneath his belly. It wasn’t far over the peaks and cliffs to the fogbanks.

  The thick mist between the third and fourth planes was cold, as if it trapped a million cutting icicles shattered into knife tips. It wasn’t easy to cross in either direction. When he had first grown beyond the third, he had been carried through the fogs on a warm current, but now, pushing his way through a barrier which no longer welcomed him, he found reverting horridly uncomfortable. But pain was, after all, as much of a companion as his harpy, and he would not let it stop him doing what he wanted. So he whirled back through the trembling, viscous wall of dull haze, shivering as he flew, a firm grasp on the bird’s neck feathers. His own power of flight was weakened by the recent attack but he could still get off the ground, and determination was a surer ticket here than it had even been in life.

  The gang was huddled in the deep valley pastures. He called to them before landing. Truce. He wasn’t coming for another fight, wasn’t presenting himself as a free victim, one man and an eagle against ten thugs. He came only to talk. Pigseed looked up, nodded and muttered. Primo came down on the short grass before the leader and sat cross-legged. He waited, part of the usual ritual of superiority, for Pigseed to speak first.

  “You’re not one of us anymore,” mumbled Pigseed into his collar. “You fought not to come back. So why turn up now?” His battle had been in the air with the harpy and his face, neck and hands still rose in welts, skinless rips and ragged black scars. No disguising his failure.

  Primo smiled. The eagle, blinking disdainfully, hissed at Pigseed under her breath and then went to sleep. “I came to talk,” said Primo, “to make things clear. So, I’ve gone up one level. Accept it. Keep your shitty jealousy to this side of the fog-bank.”

  “So, fuck off then,” said Warl pleasantly, sidling up. Sam, the little one, came too, grinning.

  “You’ve grown your nose again,” said Sam. “But I can still see the marks of my nails over your miserable fucking face.”

  “It’s not as if you loved me that much when I was part of your stupid little pack,” continued Primo patiently. “Just because I’ve moved up, suddenly you miss me that much? And you know you can’t keep someone where he doesn’t belong anymore. So, what’s this huge desire to haul me back? Just fucking spite?”

  “So, fuck off,” repeated Warl, bored.

  Pigseed was still spitting loose teeth. “It’s loyalty, isn’t it. Being loyal or being disloyal. You were one of us. You should have stayed.”

  “You never even liked me,” Primo pointed out. “And I never liked you either. You’re a small time shit. So leave me be from now on. I’ve got my new place on the fourth, and I’m staying ther
e. And if any of you ever manage to move up to the fourth yourselves, which seems fucking unlikely, well, don’t come building your slums next to me. I don’t want to know you. None of you.”

  “Living alone,” sniffed Pigseed, “ain’t natural.”

  “Beating up on old friends isn’t natural,” said Primo. “Though perhaps it is for you. That’s why you’re still on the third.”

  “Fuck off,” Warl glared at Primo. And this time he did.

  Primo kicked off from the valley’s scrubby grass and gravel, and swept straight up and over to the fogs. He didn’t feel the cold as he flew through, now travelling in the right direction. Once back on his own side, he settled on the cliff edge above his newly renovated home and leaned back against the heather brush, closing his eyes. The mist banks were tiring. But he’d achieved exactly what he’d wanted. He knew, as one could know here without acknowledging doubt, that the rabble wouldn’t attack him again. They’d leave him alone. He’d secured his isolation and his inviolate place on the fourth plane. Just how much that new place was worth, Primo wasn’t yet quite sure.

  “I can’t for the life of me see why you’re so upset,” said Julian. “You lack imagination, my girl.”

  “It’s my imagination that’s making me upset,” said Sophie. “Honestly, she never said a word to me, not a whisper. Gracious, Jules, she knew I wasn’t ever close to Dad. I’d have backed her up, been pleased for her. If only she’d told me.”

  “Darling, you’re not even discreet,” said Julian. “In one of those tantrums of yours, you’d have flung it in your father’s face. Go on, admit it. You’d never be the recipient of my secrets, I can promise you.”

  “That’s mean,” said Sophie, annoyed to realise it was true.

  There was a sheaf of papers, legally typed, safe in their own aged envelope. In Italian and difficult to decipher, but Julian had decided it meant property. It was the deeds to a house. The address was clear, then Georgia’s name and signature. It appeared she owned a house in Italy. Had owned. And Sophie was her only beneficiary.