by Chris Dolley
Minutes passed. He concentrated. He imagined. He tried to suck the ceiling towards him. Nothing. Not even a wobble. He closed his eyes, tried to float, tried to fill his mind with thoughts of weightlessness. He was a feather, a bubble of air, a floating spaceman.
He cracked open an eye. His brain stared back. The crack nothing more than a wafer-thin line.
"It's not working," said Louise.
He ignored her and tried harder. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrated, pushed with his mind, strained. More minutes passed. Time meaningless in the struggle to break free. Pain. A pain behind his eyes. Was it concentration or something else? The membrane about to snap?
Panic. Suppressed but growing. What if the membrane wasn't meant to be broken? What if all those NDEs came from people who didn't have membranes? People who were genetically disposed to separate? People not like him? People ready to ascend?
More panic. Not only was he in danger but now he was defective. A Neanderthal trying to pass himself off as Homo Superior. Soon to be a comatose Neanderthal with mind and body irreparably cleft in two.
He opened his eyes, sweat beading his forehead. The image of his brain still sitting above him, the crack still wafer-thin.
He turned his head towards Louise. "Well?" he asked. "Did anything happen?"
She shook her head. "Some rapid eye movement but that was all. The image didn't change."
He tried again and again, failing every time. Perhaps the conditions weren't right. Perhaps he was trying too hard. Or it was the presence of Louise and all her negative energy. He could feel her, sitting on the edge of that box, looking as though she was about to pounce on him and drag his mind back to earth the moment it started to break free.
He'd try again tomorrow.
Chapter Ten
The first rays of morning sun teased open his eyes. He was half awake, drifting in and out between dreams and thought. He knew he had something important to do, but couldn't put a name to the task.
And where was he? There was an imager by the side of his bed, already mounted on a tripod and pointing directly at his head.
Recollection. He was at the Rectory Clinic. Louise would be in the room next door.
He stared at the ceiling. Why couldn't he reach up there with his mind? Other people could.
He closed his eyes. Maybe if he relaxed more. Maybe if he bolstered his belief with self-hypnosis. Told a few lies. Separation was easy. He'd done it many times before. A simple stretch of the mind and he'd be free.
He drifted back into the twilight realm between sleep and waking, imagined himself floating on an invisible sea, lifted up and down by slow, undulating ocean waves. Up . . . and down, up . . . and down, each wave lifting him higher than the former, his mind feeling as light as a feather, his body sagging, until...
Until nothing. He opened his eyes expecting to see his body laid out beneath him but saw the ceiling instead.
Why couldn't he separate? Thousands of people had had near death experiences? What was different about them?
Easy answer—death—or at least its proximity. The body close to the point of shutting down, the mind reacting to the extreme stress.
Something he could replicate?
Was he that desperate? Could he really put his life in danger? Throw pills down his throat, hold his head under water?
Or was there an easier way?
A surge of excitement. He could simulate an NDE with self-hypnosis! Put his mind into a receptive state then slowly think himself closer and closer to the point of death. It wouldn't have to be dangerous. His mind was incredibly receptive. One of the most susceptible minds to hypnotic suggestion around—everyone said so. And he'd build in safeguards. Okay, he'd never attempted anything as extreme as this but it had to be worth a try, didn't it?
He didn't give himself time for doubt. He closed his eyes and worked out the script. He'd keep it simple—visualise his body on a hospital life support unit. A nurse standing by, watching the entire process, ready to intervene at the slightest danger. And then she'd start turning the dial, reducing life support, taking it down slowly, reading off the numbers from the dial as she did so—ninety-five, ninety-one—all the way down to zero.
And then he'd be clinically dead. But only for a few seconds. Just time for him to separate and fly free. And underlying everything would be the knowledge, the certainty, that the finest medical team in the world were observing close by. One word from them and the dial would be cranked back up to one hundred.
It would work! He knew it would!
He memorised the script, burned it into his subconscious. It wasn't words any more, it was real. He could smell the hospital ward, see the nurse.
Down he went, taking himself deeper, following his prepared script of self-hypnotic induction. The hospital ward sharpened, overhead lights, sounds from the corridors. The nurse smiling as she counted—eighty-three, seventy-five. A feeling of light-headedness. Vision clouding, sounds elongating.
No! This was wrong. His chest was tightening, his breathing laboured. Stop! Pull back! Enough!
The nurse smiled through his failing vision, started turning the dial back up, reversing the count.
No! A strengthening resolve. He couldn't back out now. There was no other option. He had to go on!
Doubt and conviction, fighting within his mind—grappling, tumbling, slashing. The count stuck on twenty-seven, the words like a mantra repeated over and over.
Then descending. Twenty-six, twenty-five. It was the only way. He had to succeed!
The light-headedness returned, the elongating sounds. Se-ve-n-teeeeeeen . . .
Now! Rise up. There's nothing to hold you down. You feel compelled to rise. Your body expels you.
He was rising, floating free. He opened his eyes and . . .
There was something wrong. He could see too much. He could see the ceiling, four walls, the floor—all without moving his head. And . . . was that his body?
He peered through the twilight gloom. Everything was so dark and hazy. It was definitely his room at the Rectory Clinic and it had to be his body four, five feet below him but . . . why was it rippling. Why was everything rippling?
And why was he looking in every direction at once?
He tried to reach out with an arm but . . . nothing happened. Not even to the body on the bed. Did he have no form in this existence?
He tried to turn his head and . . . the room shifted. His bed moved towards the wall, the window moved closer—a bright rectangle of light and colour.
Was he moving along the ceiling? Was he flying?
He willed himself farther. The room lurched, the window grew. He could see outside now. Trees, lawns, greens, blues and browns. The whole streaked and shimmering as though the window was covered in a wash of pouring rain.
He was free! He'd separated.
And he could move just by looking and thinking himself there.
Excitement—pure and unrestrained. The window beckoning, the sky, the clouds. One thought and he'd be away, flying with the birds . . .
Ow!
Pain hit him the moment he willed himself through the window. One second his world was awash with light, the next he was being dragged back inside the darkened room. He'd never experienced a pain like it—sharp and intense, and coming from what appeared to be every inch of his being.
Was it the membrane? Had he stretched it to its limit and it had pulled him back like a piece of elastic?
He tried the window again, slower this time. Thinking himself closer, willing himself forward . . .
He felt the resistance like a dull ache. An ache that sharpened into pain when he stretched farther and went when he retreated.
It had to be the membrane.
Shit! To have come so far . . .
He glanced towards the window. It was out there. The possibility. Flight without limitation. One stretch and he'd be there. All those stories of out-of-body flight couldn't be wrong. Okay, all the volunteers he'd tested had been f
akes or honestly deluded, but that didn't mean they all were. The stories had to have originated from somewhere. So many accounts from so many cultures. There had to be some basis in fact. Someone must have succeeded.
And it was so close. A stretch away. All he had to do was break the chord. Doctors did it every day. Umbilical chords. That's what it'd be like. A brief moment of pain and then freedom.
Or death.
What if he couldn't reconnect to his body? What if the membrane was essential to the process? He'd be cast out, a ghost, sucked up into the first bright white light and scattered to the eleven horizons. He had to stop the experiment, go back, it was too dangerous to continue.
But if he didn't try . . .
This was his last hope, his edge, turn away now and he might never get the chance again. It had taken him months to get to the ceiling, who could tell if he could ever recreate this situation again.
Indecision. He edged back and forth along the ceiling. Where to next? The window or back to his body?
Or prison? Indicted for murder, no chance of parole. Or worse, chopped up and licked by that sick little pervert, Pendennis.
He hovered over the bed, one last glance at his body then . . .
The window. He held the rippling image in his mind, looking for a tree, something on the other side that he could focus on, aim for, fix in his mind and pull towards him as fast as he dare.
He saw a branch, tuned everything else out, concentrated, braced himself. There! Now!
Light hit him from every angle. And pain—searing, debilitating, screaming at the top of your lungs pain. He was tumbling, falling, screaming—the sky, lawns, grey stone walls, clouds and trees blurring all around him.
But he was outside, dozens of yards from the window and the pain was receding fast.
And he could fly!
It was incredible. He was like a flying singularity—no mass, no shape, just an eyeball in the sky looking everywhere at once.
He circled the clinic grounds, diving, soaring, accelerating. This was true mind over matter. He could turn on a thought and accelerate at will. No need for wings to beat or thermals to soar on. All he needed was to think, move, and he moved; think, fast, and he accelerated; think, there, and he was on his way.
He climbed, he soared, he swooped. He changed direction in an instant; no G-force, no screeching tyres, no mechanical roar. Think and turn, think and accelerate, think and stop.
He stopped. Hovering hundreds of feet above a shifting landscape that shimmered and swayed. Was it his eyes? Features were sharp one second and blurred the next. Maybe that's what passed for vision in these higher realms, maybe he needed time to acclimatise? It was like peering out at the world through a rippling veil.
Not that any of that mattered. He could fly!
He focussed his mind on a cloud, pulled it towards him, barrelled through, a sensation of mist and whites and greys and . . . he was out the other side. Into the blue above, a vast blue that stretched from horizon to horizon. Below him, if there was any such direction as below any more, dabs of white cumulus marched across fields of green and brown. The whole—the sky, the sun, the earth—presented to him as one all-encompassing image. 360 degree, up down, left right, back and forth vision.
Incredible. Unfathomable. And it was all his. He could fly!
He compressed his mind, imagined himself an arrow, sleek and fast. Down, he commanded. Down fast!
The world lurched, the blues dissolved into foggy white then streaky green. The ground rising fast. He turned at the last second, the last microsecond, pulling up, cresting a tree, descending again, dipping into fields, pulling up over woods and lines of houses. And then he was rising again, spiralling and blurring into and above the clouds. How fast could he go? How high?
He pushed his new-found ability to the limit, accelerating and accelerating, the world reduced to a stream of colour and then . . .
Blackness.
He stopped dead.
Everything had gone—colours, features, everything. Had he flown into space?
But if so where was the sun? He couldn't have flown that far could he? Where were the stars?
Panic. What if he'd travelled along another axis? The f or the g or any of the higher dimensional axes for that matter. What if he'd been gliding along the edge of the dimensional divide—a few centimetres, a few microns within the higher dimensions yet still in contact with the physical world? And then veered off course, pulled away from the boundary into a world where his senses didn't work. He could be surrounded by features he couldn't see or feel.
And which way was back?
He didn't dare move. He had no bearings, no idea which way he was facing or from which direction he'd come. The world he knew could be a few centimetres away or a million miles. With ten axes of movement to choose from, which way was home?
He concentrated harder. There had to be something out there. Maybe if he waited long enough his vision would clear?
He waited. Everything was so black, so silent. No smells, no sounds, nothing.
Or was there? It was more of a feeling than an image but was that something in the distance? A patch of grey amidst the black. Small, barely discernible . . .
He embraced it. Not stopping to think, not wanting to think. Blotting everything out except that tiny patch of grey and wishing it larger and larger, focussing, pulling, sucking it towards him.
It grew. Discernible now. A patch of grey covering a sixth of his vision, with other patches within it. Lighter shades of grey, maybe a hint of blue.
He pulled harder, making it grow and grow until . . .
He tumbled through. Above him was a cloud, below were fields or was that a wood?
He stopped. He was back. Not above the clinic, or anywhere he recognised. But at least it was Earth.
Relief. If he'd had lungs he would have cried out.
He hovered for a while trying to work out his bearings. He was maybe two hundred feet above the ground. Everything below looked calm and peaceful. Not a sound . . .
Which was when it struck him. He hadn't heard a sound since he'd left his body. Not a bird, a car, nothing. And there were no smells. No feeling of wind as he flew. The only sense that appeared to function here was sight. Or what passed for sight in these upper realms.
But how was he going to get back? All he could see below were woods and fields. It could be anywhere in England. Or Northern Europe for that matter. Should he gain height and look for a town?
And risk flying off into the void again?
Definitely not. He clung to the visible surface of the planet, dropping lower to just above tree height. If he kept going in one direction—aimed for that clump of trees across the field—he was bound to find a road eventually and from there a larger road until he found something he recognised.
He advanced, slowly at first, making sure he didn't lose contact with the physical world, then accelerating, little by little, as his confidence returned. He became aware of ploughed fields, a barn, a house, a track, a road.
He turned sharply, dropping down between the high grass banks that bordered the road, a country lane by the look of it. He swept along it, a few feet above the metalled surface, twisting and turning between high banks of grass and hedge. His world contracted between the hedgerows, his all-round vision reigned in by turf and twig.
And then he saw it. Flashing yellow and orange on the periphery of his perception, lighting up the leafless gaps in the hedgerow.
He stopped—curious but apprehensive. What the hell was it?
He rose slowly above the line of hedge. A hundred yards away, a giant snake of pulsing fire cut across the fields from horizon to horizon, its image sharp and clear, its edges distinct. The only shimmer coming from the pulses of yellows and oranges that shot along its length.
What the hell was it? Was it alive?
He dropped lower, using the hedge as cover. Fire trickled through the gaps like a long line of setting suns. Could it be power lines? It was st
raight enough. Did electricity seep into the higher dimensions? Did it become visible?
Or was it a ley line? He bobbed above the hedge line for a second before dropping down again. It could be either. It could be a higher dimensional killer worm for all he knew.
But if it was a ley line . . .
He tried to reconcile the fiery line he was seeing now with the segment of blue line he'd captured once with an imager. Of course the blue was irrelevant. But there'd been no indication of a pulse. Or anything like the power that this fiery line appeared to radiate. Leys were seen as weak lines of unknown energy. An energy with a higher dimensional component, something that you could map with an imager or dowse with a rod but . . . nothing on this scale.
He bobbed up for another look. Had the line shifted position at all? Power lines and ley lines wouldn't move . . .
But neither would a killer worm . . . if it was asleep.
Indecision. Reason versus imagination. An imagination fuelled on every science fiction film he'd ever seen. It would be a snake, a worm, a gigantic tentacle of an even more gigantic planet-sucking beast.
Or something harmless, something natural—a new energy source that could revolutionise science.
He drifted along the road, continuing his journey, keeping down below hedge height, monitoring the flashes of colour from his right. The road twisted to the left then swung back to the right. Back towards the line. He could see it now, up ahead, crossing the road at hedge height. He floated towards it. The slightest change in its position and he'd blur himself into the sky.
But it didn't move. It hung there, a glowing pipe of colour, a man's height in diameter.
He looked for a pole, a pylon, something to prove it was a power line. Nothing. What proof was there for a ley line? A link to an ancient monument? An old church?
What proof was there for a killer worm? Instant immolation, snapping jaws?
He ascended, using a tree by the side of the road as a guide. The line spread across the road and beyond as far as he could see. And was that another? Over to the left, running almost parallel along the far horizon.