Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Warl pointed to the four new faces around the cooking pots. “Came in a couple daytimes back. You should have stayed with us, puke-head, we’re getting more powerful every day. You got a new gang up there on the fourth?”

  “I live alone,” said Primo, aware that such a remark would seriously diminish his reputation. “I like being alone. I don’t need a gang.”

  Warl sniggered. “No one want you then? Or are you all shitty cowards up there, and can’t keep a gang together?”

  Primo kept one eye on his harpy. He could call on her at once if anyone launched a sudden attack. But he didn’t expect one. He was higher onto the fourth now, and his vibration would separate him just enough and make him appear bright and daunting. He ignored Warl and turned again to Pigseed. “You know you can trust me. I’ll make you something worthwhile, once I’m sure you can give me the information I want. Walk with me away from this moronic swill, and I’ll explain.”

  The new comers were a mixed flock and looked wan. Not one appeared pleased to have been absorbed under Pigseed’s protection. One looked respectable, a business man, dark haired and stout with belligerent, staring eyes. He still wore his smart shirt and tie. There was a fat man with black curly hair receding from a low forehead into a bald patch. Most people grew their lost hair back immediately once arriving in the Summerlands. This man had not. It was a sign of deep pessimism, and the distrust of those around him. The retention of life’s blemishes was unusual and always told a story.

  There was a skinny kid, haunting black eyes and a sour mouth. But it was the fourth new member that fascinated Primo. He was old and heavily bearded and looked a little like Wilmot’s farcical disguises. Seemingly he’d brought his lice with him since he was scratching continuously. After a man’s death, lice usually adopted a new carrier back on Earth. This had been a faithful infestation indeed, to have died along with their host. But none of that was the main point of interest. It was the old man’s clothes which interested Primo, for he was dressed as a monk of some kind and still wore his heavily decorated rosary. Primo nodded to the monk. “Nice company you’ve found! You’d do better to join a monastery. I’ve heard tell there’s one around here on the borders somewhere. Someone like you shouldn’t be in Pigseed’s gang.”

  The monk looked up eagerly. “A monastery? Bless you my son. Where? What denomination?”

  “I don’t know,” said Primo. “Around here somewhere. You don’t need maps in this place, you just call, and it’s a monastery, not a temple or a mosque. Doesn’t that make it the right sort?”

  The monk looked away, biting his lips, which already seemed sore and scabbed as if they’d been burned. “I cannot relinquish the one true religion, not even for my personal comfort. The salvation of my soul depends on my faith. I must be loyal to my belief in the Lord.”

  Primo laughed. “A lot of faith you’ll show, attaching yourself to the nastiest gang on the third plane. But it seems we all get saved in the end. Your soul, for what it’s worth, can’t be destroyed. Good luck to you.”

  The monk scowled. “It seems we’re already in hell.”

  “Believe what you like,” said Primo, “but it’s not hell. Call on one of the do-gooders to come and help. There’s an endless supply of them just waiting to get their hands on your delicate little soul.” He paused, thought a moment, and laughed. “Mind you, some of the do-gooders are a whole lot more fun than others. Call someone. You’ll get what you think you’re worth.”

  The monk shook his head, becoming tearful. “What I deserve? Then God help me, for I deserve the hell I see around me.”

  Pigseed, standing beside him now, gave Primo a shove. “Stop ranting on, puke-arse. You’ve got right fucking boring since you’ve moved up. If you want to walk and talk with me, then move it. I’m not waiting on your highness. I remember when you seemed a decent fucker, just like the rest of us.”

  “It’s remembering I want you for,” said Primo, beginning to walk across the scrubby plane away from the campfire and its spitting embers and bubbling pots. “I want details. Everything you can think of.”

  Pigseed walked faster. “About what? I come up from the second before you ever arrived here and joined my lot, but I’m not talking about the second, so don’t bother asking.”

  Primo raised an intrigued eyebrow. “That bad, was it?”

  “Piss off,” said Pigseed. “Mind your own fucking business.”

  “Okay. It’s my business I’m interested in, not yours,” said Primo. “I want to know everything about my own arrival. Every fucking detail you recall. And if you lie, I’ll know. So tell the truth, and tell it all.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “It is simply closer for the lower planes,” said Norwen. “Their vibrations are slower, and therefore more closely aligned to those of physical life. Unless a medium is highly psychically skilled or trained, or works through a guide from our higher planes who has great experience and can manipulate the vibrations, then they will attach first to those souls on the fourth and fifth planes still eager for connections to life.”

  “That’s – just – sad,” said Georgia abruptly. They were each sitting on clouds. The clouds were rose tinged and fluffy, but they marred the purity of the sky and Georgia knew she had inadvertently made them herself from her own distress.

  The pause lengthened as Norwen waited, his smile growing. But Georgia said nothing more. “I believe,” smiled Norwen, “that you were about to say it wasn’t fair.”

  “Oh dear, so I was,” admitted Georgia. “I ought to know better than that, oughtn’t I? That’s why I stopped myself saying it. But I still thought it.”

  “I do hope,” said Norwen, “that I have already come some way in eliminating your old expectations of justice and judgement, of equality and of apportioning blame.”

  “I’m not such a bad pupil as that,” said Georgia with a small sniff.

  Norwen’s smile widened. “I was hoping it wasn’t that I’m such a poor teacher.”

  Georgia laughed, shaking her head. “I just can’t believe that people still alive, who’re desperately trying to talk to the loved ones they’ve lost, can only reach those on the lower planes. But you said the majority of all souls arrive directly on the seventh. Surely you can’t mean souls arriving on the seventh won’t ever be able to contact their relatives and friends?”

  Norwen laughed. “You might as well blame God.”

  “Destiny then?”

  “Nothing is ever quite so simple. What happens is always meant, though I wouldn’t always call it destiny,” said Norwen. “For now, think of it as intention. Intention is the gravity of the physical universe.”

  “So intention makes the world go round? Not love?” The idea did not appeal and Georgia frowned.

  “Love is the Source of meaning and meaning is the source of intention,” said Norwen.

  “So whoever was calling me,” said Georgia, “won’t ever get through. What if it’s someone I really – really – miss – and want to talk to?”

  “There are a thousand ways of making contact, and where there is deep love then the path opens,” said Norwen. “This can often be spontaneous. Especially in the first few days of your arrival in the Summerlands, sudden connections are common.”

  “I felt him. And I dreamed of my daughter. But no spontaneous visitations.”

  “Experiment,” said Norwen. “Here there are no restrictions on time. Or on learning.”

  There was only one other question worth asking. “Are there dangers?” Georgia said at once.

  “Humanity acquires the habits of evil while alive,” Norwen said, “which may then bring that soul directly to the first or second plane on death. These are spirits you might call dreadful. But once their habitual behaviour is no longer possible here, where physical contact with those living is impossible because of the barrier of differing vibration, then the living cannot bring danger to the dead, and the dead cannot be dangerous to the living. Anger and fear are possible interactions,
but not evil. No real damage can ever be done from soul to soul. Each soul, however degenerate it may have become, carries the kernel of its sacred Source within it.”

  “When I was alive,” remembered Georgia, “people were often frightened about séances, mediums, and ghosts.”

  “Fear,” Norwen reminded her, “is the opposite of love and faith. Fear forgets the power of our Source.”

  Pigseed pointed. “I didn’t see you actually come over did I, stupid prick. You went straight into the hospital. Most do.”

  Primo stared. The building soared against the blue summer sky, white marble sparkling, roofed in white, pillared in white. The marble had a semblance of translucence. Its polish reflected the passage of the birds, wide white wings sweeping the white austerity. Then, like the delving of tunnels or the pulsing of veins, it showed its life. It was not marble, but a spiritual acceptance symbolised in stone. He could have sworn he’d never even seen it before, let alone stayed there.

  “I don’t remember,” said Primo. “How the fuck did I forget something like that?”

  Pigseed shook his head. “I came through on the second. They’ve got a hospital there too. We called it the fucking crematorium, but it’s just a sort of tomb really. They sling you into one when you die, you wake up in another over here. No big deal. Nothing special to forget. Nothing special to remember.”

  “They’ve got doctors in there then?”

  “I don’t remember,” said Pigseed, shook his head again and grinned. “What the fuck. Who cares?”

  “So, what happened when I came out of hospital?” demanded Primo. “You picked me up pretty quick. You got people waiting at the gates or something?”

  Pigseed started laughing. Then he couldn’t stop. He bent over, heaving for breath. “I can remember that okay. Sure. You were a snivel-arsed little bugger, scared shitless about dying. What a fucking rabbit. Waiting for divine retribution, you were, expecting to get pickled in flame or get a stake shoved up your arse. What a scumdrip. I did you a service, taking you into the gang.”

  Primo had several blatantly vituperative profanities that came instantly to mind in answer to that, but if he said exactly what was in his thoughts, then he’d get no more cooperation, so he smiled instead. “A sweet thought. Fucking kind of you. So, you saw me come out of this place? You actually saw me?”

  “I’m not fucking blind,” said Pigseed.

  Primo smiled again. Perhaps. But he was well nigh fucking deaf. Pigseed’s telepathic abilities were about as impressive as his cultural finesse. He wasn’t – and just as well – picking up on what Primo was thinking about him right now. “So, I came out of those big doors? Looking scared?”

  Pigseed relented. Outright lying was hard for the dead, even on this level. “Well, maybe not scared. Pissing stupid.”

  “Describe it,” said Primo, prepared for the inevitable insults. He could read between the grimaces and he’d know the truth.

  Then things happened in a way he had not expected. First he saw Wilmot’s smile, disengaged, as if it floated, sea-gull style, in the air of his mind. Then he saw the events taking shape as Pigseed explained them. The words, however crudely expressed, faded. Instead Primo saw the happenings, himself watching himself, and so watched in vivid truth his first entrance onto the free Summerlands, planes of death.

  He stood first, as nervous and doubtful as Pigseed had described him, on the white marble steps. The tall man beside him was speaking. “Every soul is individual. What happens to one, will not happen identically to another. I wish you would have stayed longer. Perhaps much longer. But you have chosen to leave and are free to do so. You have not gained all you could from your stay here.”

  “It wasn’t much,” Primo heard himself saying.

  “Already you dismiss the benefits, however small,” the other man pointed out. “Negative attracts negative. See instead the glories of this land stretching before you, its beauty and warmth. Everything you see here is its own true self pulsing with new life. Each flower, each tree, each creature, is itself in ultimate essence. You could also be that, if you look beyond the negative.”

  Primo stood hunched, lost and confused. “I didn’t want to die yet. I wasn’t ready. And at least dying, if I had to do it now, should have been the end of everything. I didn’t want to carry on. I’m fucking worn out. I wanted to sleep and sleep and never wake up. I didn’t want some fucking bouncy Heaven waiting, all sunny and bright and fucking endless. Who asked for life after death, anyway? Can’t I say no?”

  The doctor smiled. “You have many choices in the Summerlands, but not that one. Find yourself a home. Build it strong and private, and go inside and try to sleep if you reject experience. You’ll wake up eventually, but you may achieve a long, deep sleep first. But be careful. There are many dangers on this particular plane for those who want only escape and see only the negative.”

  “I slept in the ward back there,” Primo waved into the rich green shadows of the open hospital doors behind him. “But I dreamed. I woke up because I didn’t like the dreams. What use is sleeping, if you fucking dream?”

  “If you’d accepted the dreams and the teaching they could give you,” the doctor said gently, “the learning would eventually have taken you into an even deeper sleep. Then utter rest would have overtaken you without the interruption of dreams. You didn’t allow that to happen.”

  “No,” admitted Primo. “Fucking true. All that dreaming shit took me back into life and everything that fucking happened, bit by bit. Jesus, doing it once was enough. I wasn’t going to have it forced down my fucking throat a second time.”

  “Absorbing past memories after death, clears them,” said the doctor. “It is an exercise of freedom, to remember the life you’ve left. You chose not to do that. You rejected memory. You have the right to accept or deny, and you chose to deny. If you now regret that choice, then build yourself a home and sleep deep within it. Absorb the dreams and the memories, and you will wake utterly refreshed, probably directly onto a higher level than you find yourself here. But this is my advice and you are perfectly free to ignore it.”

  “I don’t need your fucking advice,” muttered Primo, “and I don’t give a shit about levels and planes and all that crap. So Heaven’s as fucking class conscious as everything else, is it? One for the rich, another putrid slum for the poor. I might have guessed.”

  The doctor smiled. “Not class. Just suitability. It’s vibration that decides your level. Your whole spirit resonates to a vibration that must be the same as the plane where you reside. These vibrations are faster than the speed of light, so you’re completely invisible to the people alive on Earth. You couldn’t breathe if you went to the wrong plane. It would be as though it rejected you. Only guides, like myself, who learn how to adjust their vibrations, can visit other lower planes for long periods.”

  Primo glared. “What for? Fucking tourism? Better drug dealers?”

  “The anger you carry,” said the doctor, “keeps you on a plane that vibrates far slower. But when you are ready, you’ll move up. Personally I believe your mind and spirit should have taken you directly to the fifth plane on death, but your pride in anger slows you down and so you are here on the third. I can do no more for you now, but I wish you great happiness.” He turned, and went back into the hospital, disappearing into the swirl of curtained shadows. Primo stood alone and desperately vulnerable on the steps. He didn’t move for some minutes.

  The Primo of now watched himself and the memories crept back. He remembered seeing the sweep of meadow and the distant woods, remembered the awe when noticing how no horizon obscured or limited his view. He was on the brink of discovering the beauty of it, when Pigseed’s gang had turned up.

  Georgia returned to the fifth plane and visited her mother. Rita was baking bread. For one moment, the enticing perfume was delicious even to Georgia.

  “Wholemeal,” said Rita. “It’s less fattening. Best for the heart, they say. And real butter. At least, Dottie says it’s
real. There’s a little farm with cows over the hill outside of town.”

  “Better for the heart,” said Georgia, sitting beside the laden coffee table. “In case of heart attacks? Or high cholesterol?”

  “Don’t play high and mighty with me, miss,” said Rita, spreading scones. “I live the way I want. I told you that before. You don’t like it? Then don’t come.”

  “Pooh.” Georgia ate a scone. “Don’t daughters always nag their mothers?” It was, after all, extremely pleasant. “And you must have been a really good cook – before,” she said with self-conscious caution.

  “I was, and no good reminding me of how you missed all that as a kid, because I don’t need you rubbing it in,” said Rita. “Kids may like nagging their mothers once they grow up, but remember it’s mothers who ought to nag their kids. What was Maurice like anyway? Fed you on take-aways I don’t doubt. Rubbish in cellophane.”

  “We couldn’t afford that,” said Georgia. “He learned to cook. He was a bloody good father, honestly he was. But I didn’t come to talk about him. Really I came about the phone call the other day. You know, when everyone else pushed in and we couldn’t get through.” She paused. Talking about Romano with this woman, mother or no mother, just didn’t feel right. Eventually she said, small voiced, “Do you know who it was?”

  Rita frowned. “Big Bernie heard the call first. It was him knew it was for you. Some kid with an accent, he said.”

  Georgia couldn’t think of any kid with an accent who would be trying to contact her. “An Italian accent perhaps?”

  “How would I know?” said Rita. “We never really got through, did we? Anyway, it was fun while it lasted. My first call, as it happens.”

  Georgia blinked. “Yours or mine?” And then felt ashamed of herself for saying it.

  “Alright, be like that,” scowled Rita. “So much for high fallutin’ top of the class levels, and thinking you’re better than me. The call was for you, I know that. Still didn’t get through clear, did it?”