‘Not until we have more raw data, at least. For now, I want you to seek out as many disembodied consciousnesses as you can find. Interact with them. Learn from them. Whatever you do, do not follow them when they leave. Do you think you can do that?’
She mockingly performed a salute.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Don’t be like that, Emmy.’
‘Like what?’
‘So flippant. It’s like ever since Tibet you no longer take anything seriously. I don’t know if you’re just trying to emotionally detach yourself from things, but it does concern me. It concerns me a lot.’
‘I’m fine,’ she assured him, ‘but don’t ask me to try and change. I think it’s good to put some emotional distance between ourselves and the work right now. Besides, what’s the alternative? My grandfather was the most serious man alive and look where that got him.’
‘Point taken. Now tell me; are you absolutely clear on what I am asking you to do?’
She smiled.
‘One hundred percent. You’re asking me to go on a ghost hunt.’
***
Tyler went swimming at the creek every morning. The cool, fresh water invigorated him, setting him up perfectly for his ten hour shifts on the site. It was a ritual that he followed religiously. Six months had passed since the last time he skipped his pre-work exercise. Only then it had been because of a particularly heavy session on the beer the night before. Ordinarily, he would not let a mere hangover deter him, but just once in a while, it gets the better of the best of us.
Sometimes he had company on these sessions and sometimes he swam alone. This morning fell into the latter category. He had just finished his requisite lengths and was heading back to the shore when, about ten yards from the water’s edge, he was struck by an excruciating cramp in his right foot. The pain was fleeting and the agony it brought vanished as suddenly as it had come on, to be replaced by a paralysing numbness down the lower right side of his body.
A former captain of the high school swimming team, Tyler was not going to let something as trivial as a minor cramp slow him down. He made it into the shallows on upper body strength alone. Then once he was in just two feet of water, he placed his feet down onto the submerged rocks in an attempt to stand. Though his foot was still numb, he thought it should not be a problem hobbling to drier land where he could try and work some feeling back into it.
As soon as he stepped onto the rocks, the pain returned, stronger than before, causing him to lose his balance and fall backwards into the water. For a split second his head was fully submerged, sending water rushing around his ears. In the middle distance he heard a low growl, like a dog’s bark slowed down to half speed. He placed his palms onto the rocks and pushed his head back above the surface.
After spitting out a mouthful of bitter lake water he glanced over to the shoreline to see if there were any dogs that could have emitted the noise he had heard a moment earlier. There was none. The place was completely deserted.
His foot was still numb from the cramp, and manoeuvring his way to shore would prove trickier than he had earlier anticipated. Before attempting to reorient himself, he raised his right leg out of the water to check it over. The foot was not even visible. He guessed the fall must have twisted it worse than he had originally thought. In order to get a better look, he bent his knee inward. He still could not see his foot as it appeared to be covered by some kind of congealed red jelly.
It took a moment for him to fully comprehend what he was looking at. When he realised that the jelly was actually the exposed end of his severed flesh, the knowledge this brought with it ignited his pain receptors like never before. Pure panic took control of his body. Whatever damage had been done, whatever injuries he had sustained, it was absolutely imperative that he got to the shore as quickly as possible.
He corkscrewed until he was on his hands and knees, facing the shoreline. Just as he began his scramble, something butted him in the side, catching him off guard, flipping him onto his back. Again, he heard a bark. It was louder this time - more immediate. Tyler now knew that the sound was not coming from a canine. A tailfin breached the water ten yards from where he sat, before angling one hundred and eighty degrees, performing the aquatic equivalent of a handbrake turn.
It had to be a bull shark. Tyler had heard of them finding their way into freshwater lakes, but never in these parts. There was a possibility the creek led all the way to the ocean, but that was over thirty kilometres away. Sharks had not even been on his radar when going for his morning swim. Snakes definitely. But sharks? Not in a million years.
Now he knew what he was dealing with, he at least knew that dry land would lead to safety. Well, provided he could stem the flow of blood from his wound, that is. Still unable to stand and in water too shallow to swim in, he pushed himself backwards on his backside, over the rocks and towards the pebbled shoreline. When he found himself sitting in less than a foot of water, he began to believe that his ordeal would soon be over.
He was correct.
The shark once more took a hold of the bottom of his right leg. This time, instead of tearing off a bite, it clamped together its jaws and tried to chew its way up Tyler’s limb. His body had become weak and unresponsive from losing so much blood, denying his fight back the strength it needed. He kicked limply with his other leg, but the shark regarded the resulting blows as nothing but a minor annoyance as it extended its meal all the way to the knee.
Finally, the animal let go, and so too, did Tyler. He was found by a camper van full of backpackers an hour later. The combination of extreme blood loss, shock and hypothermia making sure that he did not survive the ambulance ride. When the end came, the delusions he experienced in his fever were replaced by a much calmer shifting of perception. The pain ended and he found himself floating in a sea of serenity.
Random thoughts and memories passed over his awareness. It was like everything he had ever been was compressed into a singularity. His life had passed and now only existed as a memory. The future, too, had become part of the moment. All that was once before and after was now part of the now. Lights appeared all around and he wanted nothing more than to be a part of them. As if his desire had given him wings, he found his consciousness pulled towards the brightest spot. When he got to it he could see that it was an angel in the form of a beautiful woman. She extended her arm and as the memory of his fingertips touched hers, he was gone.
***
The freedom Emmy experienced in her astral state was a feeling like no other. When she passed over the land, she felt a connection to life – all life. It was a connection that simply did not exist in the material world. It made her feel a part of a far greater whole. Whether this was an illusion or if it really did indicate a higher purpose of being did not matter. The feeling in itself was enough.
She came across the spirit entirely by chance. She had been taking the scenic route towards the coastline and the major population centres when she spotted it being ejected by what she discerned to be a speeding vehicle. Given the encounter that was to follow, she would later deduce it to have been an ambulance.
This was not the first time she had come across a recently disembodied essence of life. The first had been during her early experiments into astral travel when the spirit of a woman had followed her back to the laboratory before disappearing in a surge of electricity. Another encounter had led to the crossing over of Sam Carlton, one of the infected survivors of Jackson’s Hill. Thus far Emmy herself had not interacted directly with any of these life sources.
To try and appear as non-threatening as possible she morphed into a semblance of her human form, which would only be visible to another astral being. The energy instinctively did the same, allowing her to see that it was a man; probably in his early thirties. He seemed confused, but not threatened or afraid. The lower half of one of his legs was missing.
Despite Charlie’s insistence that she did not cross over again, Emmy was keen to establish a pseudo-phys
ical contact with the man. When they touched, it was not like her interactions with Charlie in his astral form or even like it was when she crossed over with Jimmy. The sensation was less intense. She could see into the man’s memories, but felt no awareness coming from him.
‘My name is Emmy,’ she said, projecting her thoughts into his being.
His eyes looked through her, but not to what was behind - more to what was beyond, as if he were glimpsing into the next life. A smile spread across his face, like he had found contentment.
‘It’s okay,’ Emmy added. ‘I am here to help you.’
She still received no reply. It was as if the other spirit was nothing but an empty shell. This made no sense to the scientist. Her understanding was that the body was merely the casing and what came from within possessed the true essence of consciousness, but this spirit contained no awareness whatsoever. It appeared to be nothing but a residual afterglow of the life preceding it.
An opening appeared, as she knew it would, but she had no desire to pass through. At least, not with this detached lifeless spectre alongside her.
She let go of its hand.
The being did not react in what could be described as a cognitive way. It moved towards her but in a way that indicated it was being drawn by magnetic impulse rather than free will. Emmy pushed herself away from it. In order to increase the separation between them, she willed her consciousness to the other side of the world.
In an instant she had crossed the Pacific Ocean and entered North America.
She was not alone.
The dead man had followed. In a continued attempt to rid herself of him, she kept low, mingling with the crowded city streets of what would be downtown San Francisco. She hoped to blend in with the numerous living energies of the people all around, but still this recently deceased thing was only drawn to her.
Then something changed.
A shift occurred in one of the lights around her. Something had broken formation and joined the chase. Emmy figured that another transition from life into death had taken place. The magnetic impulse between this new spirit and the original was stronger than it was with her, and the two were pulled together, before annihilating in a brilliant burst of light.
She decided not to stick around any longer for fear of attracting more interest. The more crowded the city, the more death that took place there. Besides, she had already learned enough for one session. She concentrated her will until it took her straight back to the laboratory and her waiting body, where she awoke to tell Charlie what she had seen.
‘And you’re sure it had no awareness of you?’ her lab partner asked.
‘None at all. I mean, it was obviously drawn toward me, but not in a conscious way. It didn’t seem to be alive in any conventional sense.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘You know what I mean. It was more like a hologram than a person. Just a lifeless projection of humanity.’
‘Maybe it was. Lifeless, that is. Ever since we started down this path we were both quick to jump to conclusions regarding the possibility of some sort of soul. What if we were wrong?’
Emmy shook her head.
‘How can you even suggest such a thing after everything we’ve seen? If the spirit doesn’t live on outside the body; how do you explain Lucy’s father or the others?’
‘It could all have been down to the astral radiation.’
She turned away from him in frustration. He was taking them back into one of their many circular arguments on the subject.
‘I don’t accept that,’ she told him. ‘Lucy’s dad died a week before she arrived at Jackson’s Hill. There’s no way he could have stuck around for that long unless driven by conscious will.’
Charlie smiled. If she regarded his logic to be a brick wall, then her stubbornness smashed its way through like a wrecking ball.
‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ he replied. ‘We need to gather more data.’
‘You want me to find more dead people?’
‘Not you – we. Next time, I’m coming with you.’
Chapter 4
When traversing great distances in pairs, astral travellers have to keep in a strict formation to ensure they do not inadvertently break the other’s cord and thereby cut off the signal between mind and body. If remaining terrestrial, like Emmy and Charlie planned, such precautions were not necessary as the quantum connection was much stronger.
A lot of research had been conducted in the field of post mortality astral physics. This had mostly been carried out by monitoring the recently deceased at hospices and hospitals. The scientists saw no reason not to adopt the same approach in this instance. It did not take them long to find their first candidate.
The astral travellers took position either side of the dying individual before focussing all of their concentration into projecting outwards a human manifestation of their respective beings. It was their intention to be seen by whatever spirits they came across. They were essentially using themselves as bait.
The magnitude of the living energy between the scientists peaked at the moment of transition. As the body between them lay dying, its light began to fade, but then with a bright burst of radiance, it broke free, before dimming once more. Emmy looked at the being and then at Charlie. For the first time, she realised that these untethered, recently deceased beings were noticeably different to an astral traveller. There was less energy to them – less complexity.
After a moment, the newly released being spotted the astral travellers. A smile of pure contentment spread over its features, before evening out into emptiness. It floated toward them as if pulled by an invisible rope and Emmy instantly recognised the vacant expression that it held. She recognised it from the spirit she had encountered the previous day.
Charlie, being less experienced in such circumstances, looked to his partner for guidance. Emmy swept out her translucent arm, offering him the opportunity to be the one to interact with the energy of the deceased. If he still required breath, he would have taken a deep one. As it was, he simply willed himself into the path of the approaching spirit.
‘I mean you no harm,’ he said, as their energies entwined.
He received no reply, but he did receive flashes of memory from the deceased. All of its life experiences were tied to that small amount of insubstantial energy. An entire lifetime was mapped out, yet something was missing. There was no emotion, no drive and no desire. The spirit was completely vacant of active consciousness.
Charlie was so chilled by the encounter that he failed to notice the opening expanding all around him. As the wormhole came into existence, it warped and reshaped the very fabric of spacetime. When he eventually did see it, he found its warmth inviting and considered letting go; to allow his spirit to pass through. Emmy had done so and she made it back without harm.
‘No you don’t,’ said a familiar voice inside his mind.
The opening was now sufficiently large that the other being was able to cross over. As it did so, Charlie was yanked back by his partner. She did not hold onto him long. Just enough to keep him from leaving her. Once she had his attention she waved her flattened palm underneath her chin and mouthed the words “cut it”.
They awoke in their pods at the same time. Charlie felt a little shaken, so Emmy was first to unstrap herself. She immediately went to check on her colleague. Astral travelling gives an objective, detached perspective to everything and now he was back in his body the emotions that he lacked on his trip would soon catch up to him.
‘Take a moment to take it all in,’ she told him. ‘The emptiness is a little scary. Where we once expected to find hope, there’s only despair. Not even that, really. There is...nothing.’
He followed her advice, but did not feel any better for it. His body was weary from the exertion of the separation, but that did not begin to account for the extent of his malaise. His heart had become heavier. In a way, a small piece of him had died along with the ghost in the hospice.
‘Such emptiness,’ he said, addressing, but not looking at Emmy.
‘Isn’t that what you were expecting after my last report?’ asked Emmy.
This time he did look at her. His features sagged like all of Earth’s gravity was concentrated on his face. Happiness illuminates the expression, sadness distorts it – makes it look older.
‘Expectations are one thing,’ he replied, ‘but this?’
‘Believe me; I know exactly what you’re feeling right now. I actually feel worse today than I did yesterday. Now I know it wasn’t an isolated case. The energies we’re coming across are no longer conscious. They seem to be nothing but disembodied memories.’
‘I guess your grandfather was right after all. Death really is the end.’
He looked for Emmy’s response and noticed tears forming in the corners of her eyes. That is when he realised the full extent of their findings.
‘Two results are not enough to build a workable theory,’ he told her. ‘We’ll continue to search. Who knows what we’ll find’
She nodded and then wiped away the tears before they had time to run down her face. Emmy was not one to give up easily, but she was already beginning to fear the worst. Her love and the residents of Jackson’s Hill; they may all have gone forever.
***
The woman’s chest rose and fell like gently rolling waves on the ocean. It was no different to watching a person sleeping. Except that the person in the bed was not sleeping. A simple shake would not rouse her. Nor would she regain consciousness with each new dawn. There was to be no return from the slumber into which she had fallen.
Emmy reached out and took the hand of her former lover in her own. It was warm, but it did not feel alive. Not anymore. Lucy was gone. For the first time, Emmy realised what that meant. She was not coming back to her.
‘There may still be a way.’
The voice startled her. It was unexpected. It was...impossible.
Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 65