📖 The Ghost of Emily - Chapter 19

In which a journey to a land of dreams ends as mere vapour.

“When will we get to see the elephant, Mama?”

“Soon my little love, soon you will see everything.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you couldn’t. But soon you will.”

Maisie studied the small carved elephant that she clutched tightly in her hands, as she bounced up and down on her mother’s back. The fascinating sight of it had offered her some soothing distraction whenever she thought about leaving her father, Gus and Nimrod behind. Her elbows were pressed into her mother’s shoulders, her legs wrapped about Emily’s waist, squeezing firmly for stability. Emily’s hands reached around behind Maisie, cupping her hands to form a seat under her buttocks. Emily was running at full speed, but her breathing was steady, as if she was standing.

Maisie had gotten used to the strange things she had noticed about her mother in the last two days of travel. The things that had frightened her at first, now gave her comfort. Her mother was strong, and lifting Maisie was effortless for her. She caught a bird with her hand and cooked it for Maisie’s dinner.

For two nights and the better part of two days, she had been running for hours on end, without any need for rest. They had stopped several times when Maisie felt motion sickness, or needed food, or a brief sleep. When Maisie felt better again, the running would continue. Even in the night, her mother was able to run at full speed with no torchlight to guide her. Maisie quickly learned to trust that this different, new version of her mother was the ultimate protector. On the night runs, Maisie would take great pleasure in studying her elephant carving under the light that was emanating from her mother’s body and clothes.

As Emily ran steadily through a shallow creek bed, some ice cold water splashed up into Maisie’s back making her softly shriek.

“Are you okay, darling?” Emily asked, her voice unwavering despite the running.

“It’s... it’s cold. I’m cold, Mama," she replied.

“Okay, my little love. We’ll rest.”

Emily’s pace slowed, evenly, exponentially. She squatted, letting Maisie down onto the pebbly ground near the tree line.

The afternoon sun was getting low, the shadows of the trees were long and cold. Maisie shuffled awkwardly on her stiff legs into a patch of sunlight to warm her back. The blood began returning to her feet and she took a moment to stand still and enjoy the feeling of millions of ants dancing down the insides of her legs.

She turned to the ghost of Emily, her face serious, her hand clutching the elephant carving firmly. “Will Papa and Gussy be there when we get there?”

Emily smiled, reassuringly. “No, little love, I told you... remember?”

“I’ll be the first. They’ll join us soon.”

“Yes.”

Maisie took pleasure in seeing her mother smile at her. I got it right, she thought, and Mama loves me for it.

“And when we’ve reached the wonderful place, you can help me to make sure that Papa and Gussy join us safely too, alright?”

Maisie smiled, content to have a purpose. “Yes! I will!”

She wandered over to the stream, and knelt down beside it. She saw her face reflected in the rippling surface. It was a confusing distortion of how she saw herself in her mind’s eye. She had spent so little time in her life in front of mirrors. The only time in her memory was just two nights ago, after the bath with Gus, when her father lifted her up, wrapped snuggly in a towel, and wiped the steam off the mirror to show her the image of her own face, warmly lit by candlelight. She had thought herself to be beautiful. Her breath had been taken away at the symmetry, the smallness, the prettiness of her own face. But now as she saw herself in the stream, her face was ugly, distorted, unreal. A dismantled, macabre wraith, where a pretty girl should have been.

The twisted spectre of light that was her mother’s reflection appeared in front of the rippled blue canvas, behind her.

“Are we there yet, Mama?”

“See those trees over there?” She gestured south-westward.

“Yes.”

“We need to run through those trees for seventeen more minutes.”

Maisie’s face lit up. “That’s not very long, is it?”

“It’s not a very long time at all. Once we clear the trees, you will see a valley full of beautiful towers, and shimmering lakes.”

“Is the elephant there?”

“It’s not, but I promise you my darling, when we reach our final destination, you will see things like you have never imagined. Elephants, giraffes, mountains, great flying machines, and just about anything you could dream of. You will see all the wonderful things that every human who has crossed over has ever seen. It will all be yours, too.”

Maisie smiled, wide-eyed at the thought. Another troubling thought entered her mind, and her brow lowered. “What about… the bad things?”

Emily reached out her hand to Maisie, who obliged and took it, rising and beginning to mount her mother’s back once more. “Don’t worry, my sweetheart. Soon none of your fears will matter. You’ll see. Come on, let’s go.” With the saddle position firmly established, Emily took up her bolt again after a steady acceleration, and Maisie held on tight as they tore through the darkly shaded, final stretch of forest.

Maisie could see the clearing up ahead. A great blue sky was getting wider and wider as the trees rushed past them like felled logs careening down a river. Something in Maisie’s gut anticipated a great fall at the edge of the wood, and she closed her eyes for fear.

Suddenly, she felt a rush of wind across her face and her body was fully enveloped in hot sunlight.

“Look, Maisie! Look!”

Maisie opened her eyes to glorious sunshine, under a perfect blue sky, while hurtling down a grassy slope towards a vast sprawl of buildings, more numerous than she could ever have imagined. The walk down the street of the the town with her father and brother had given her a sense of wanting to belong. But that town had been dead. Empty, and still.

This place was different. What she saw below completely overwhelmed her. Her eyes filled with tears, her mouth widening into a beaming smile the likes of which she couldn’t remember ever expressing.

On massive flat planes of grey concrete ahead she saw people, dozens, hundreds of them walking about in all directions, some interacting, some performing labour tasks like pushing trolleys that were hundreds of times their own size. She saw enormous robots too, some nine or ten feet tall, some rolling around on wheels, some stomping along on giant, cumbersome feet.

Around the outskirts of the enormous concrete pad was a row of huge buildings with slanted roofs, each with rows of long stacks reaching higher into the sky than Maisie could comprehend. She studied the stacks for a time as she bounced upon her mother’s back. In an almost rhythmic symmetry, the rows of stacks on each building would emit a puff of black smoke into the air, one after another, tracing all the way forward from the farthest stack to the closest, along the full length of each building. As one cloud of black smoke would begin to dissipate, the stack behind it would emit a fresh one, creating a loosely woven pattern in the air as each billow would melt away, that to Maisie resembled a fluffy staircase into the sky. As one cycle of puffs would finish, another building would begin its own emission cycle. And so, in a seemingly contained area above this unfathomably large array of factories, there hovered a perpetual blackish haze.

A huge airship flew into Maisie’s field of view. It was silent, which surprised her. The only flying creatures she had ever seen were ducks and other birds, and even they made a terrible noise at times. She remembered her father telling her about the airships that men and women had once travelled in, and it stunned her to see one now, swinging violently across the blue. It suddenly slowed to a gently bobbing hover. The giant jet-turrets mounted on its sides rotated into a vertical position, and slowly lowered the craft to a steady landing in a large circle painted onto the pad.

As they drew closer to the buildings, Maisie began to see the people in more detail. Most of them looked just like her and her mother. Some were like people, but they were blank, faceless, and without clothing. Just greyish, palely glowing human shapes that walked in very straight lines. Maisie decided that these were most definitely the ghosts that Gus and Papa had been talking about.

She looked again at some of the figures with faces. Some were young, some old, and there were children too. Most of them looked healthy and clean, some were ragged and sickly in their appearance. But they were all smiling. The smile felt contagious, and as Maisie tried to move her own face into a mimicking smile, she realised that her cheeks were as scrunched as they could be. She hadn’t stopped smiling since the sight of the city appeared to her. Her face was beginning to hurt.

In the distance she could see another large building, on a hilltop. But there was something different about this one. Its design bewildered her. It didn’t look like a proper shelter at all, but it was somehow beautiful. A large chunk of it appeared to be missing.

Four diagonal poles pushed from the corners of the top of the building, thrusting up to merge into a rectangular frame housing a single steel post that shot into the sky. Hanging from its apex was a shaggy, tattered and filthy blue flag, which sported several large off-white pointed objects. In the bottom quadrant, adjacent to the flagpole, was a strange red and white pattern of criss-crossing lines. The flag was enormous and stunned Maisie as she watched it flapping in the breeze. It troubled her somehow that it had two large holes in it, whose edges were charred black, and an end that was torn and frayed.

Below the steel flag-bearing structure was a strange façade of white concrete that had many large vertical rectangles cut out of it. One half of the façade was made of white panels that were either cracked, or fully collapsed. Jutting out to the left of the damaged façade was a long wall of brownish concrete that appeared to be a retaining wall holding up a strangely shaped green meadow of grass that swept across the top of the building and under the steel spire, acting as some kind of roof. To the right was a mirroring wall, but this one had been blasted open, and the grassy meadow had collapsed all over its ruins. The grass sweeping up the slope to this strange building was littered with rubble, turned-over motor vehicles, and strange jagged white objects that Maisie could faintly make out as bones.

“What is that place?” she asked Emily, raising one hand to point in the direction of the spired ruins.

“That was where the rulers of this country once sat. Before the wartimes," answered Emily.

“Wartimes? You mean when the machines came?”

“No, Maisie. The machines came to end the wars. The machines are here to save us.”

“From what?” asked Maisie.

“From ourselves.”

Maisie didn’t understand what Emily meant, but she realised that she had come this far, and the answers were very near. She took a breath, and lowered her gaze back to the concrete pad, which Emily was now slowing onto. They were surrounded now by people, large robots, and blank ghosts. It was a thronging metropolis, and Maisie realised, as another airship landed in a perfect parallel position to the first one, that this was some kind of transitory station.

Out of the two airships people were filing, mostly in pairs, some with children in arms, others in whole family groups. Maisie observed that in every group of the long queue to the factories, there was one person who stood out from the others. This person was immaculately clean, well groomed, radiantly healthy looking, and leading the way. The others were gaunt and dirty, hungry looking people. They all looked happy to be there, but they clearly had come from a much worse place.

Maisie looked down at her own arms. Her jacket was covered in a dry crust of mud, with small streaks of blood in some spots from their most recent butchering. Her hands were scratched, her exposed forearm was bruised in one place, and her fingernails were black and full of grit. For a moment, she felt ashamed of herself, especially when looking at her mother’s neck and hair, and seeing how clean and beautiful they were.

But then she realised that she, like all of these people arriving, was a special guest. Someone invited to this wondrous place by one of the clean ones, and that everyone here was so happy to be here. Like they had all reached the end of a long, terrible, difficult nightmare of a journey. That relief, and rest, and comfort were all just inside those great buildings ahead.

Emily stepped over and took her place at the back of the queue, which was slowly funnelling into the factory at the centre of the row of buildings. She gently lowered Maisie to the ground, and took her hand. Maisie looked up at her beautiful mother, happy to be standing by her side and venturing forward into this bright new future, happy that the elephant was still in her other hand.

A strange buzzing sound caught Maisie’s attention, and she turned sharply to see what it was. A large robot on wheels was buzzing along beside the line of people queued for the buildings, and just as it came into her vision it passed her with an imposing rumble that gave her a fright. She leapt a little and clutched her mother’s leg, looking for protection, or reassurance.

“It’s okay, darling, they’re our friends," Emily said.

Maisie watched it pass, nervously, still clinging to her mother in uncertainty.

They were moving forward in the queue steadily, and soon they were passing one of the parked transport airships, its nose pointed right towards them. Maisie squinted at the sun’s reflection on the windshield, and as they rotated around the front of the ship she was able to make out a figure inside the cockpit. She focussed her attention more closely and realised that it was a blank man. He had no face or characteristics, only a small slit where a mouth would be. Suddenly his head turned sharply, and though there were no discernible facial features to prove it, she felt as if he was looking right at her. It sent a cold chill down her back, and she was compelled to look away, and focus forward, on the bright future she anticipated inside the dark, colossal buildings drawing closer step by step.

The large rolling robot that had scooted a hundred metres ahead of them before, had to make a turn and cross the queue of humanoids, and the procession came to a brief, orderly halt. In front of Maisie stood a very old man, hunched forward over a walking cane. By his side, with linked arm, was a young, beautiful woman who was dressed in a flowing yellow dress and patent leather shoes that made Maisie’s eyes sparkle with adoration. She looked like she was from another time altogether.

The old man noticed Maisie staring at the woman as they waited patiently for the queue to resume its motion. He turned to her, and the woman followed.

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?” the man said to Maisie, with a twinkle in his grey, murky eyes.

“Y-yes...” said Maisie, nervously.

“Don’t be afraid little girl, we’re all friends here. We’ll all be as one soon enough.”

Maisie smiled, though she didn’t understand what he meant at all. “How old are you? You look really old.”

The old man chuckled and leaned forward slightly to her. He was filthy, haggard, and looked barely alive anymore. “I’m really old, yes. But then... I’m as young as her,” he gestured at the woman next to him, “and I’m as young as you. You’ll see!” he laughed again, then stood up, looked at the woman adoringly, then leaned to her and passionately kissed her. She responded in kind, and something about the image troubled Maisie deeply. She looked up at her mother, and took shelter from her discomfort in the beautiful image that she had carried around in a small photo for as long as she could remember. Now, finally, her mother was back, real enough to touch.

The queue continued forward, and as a nearby transport airship lifted off the pad and into the air, a new area came into Maisie’s view. She could see a dozen or more identical airships lined up and perfectly parked in a row in the distance. Beyond them were several more of the large-footed robots, carrying enormous boxes in their arms and marching towards an area that looked like a new factory being built.

At the edge of the construction site was another robot, the biggest one yet, whose body consisted of two ten-metre vertical tracks, and an adjoining array across its middle. It was sliding up and down along the tracks rapidly, and as it did it was silently secreting layer upon layer of grey matter into a form that, within moments, had taken clear shape as a wall for a new factory space. As Maisie continued forward in the queue, she kept watching the machine work. Before long a significant portion of a new building had appeared, standing strong, and slowly changing colour from a wet, dark surface, into a pastel grey of dry concrete.

Soon Emily and Maisie were entering a dark corridor within which eight large doors were opening and closing automatically. Each time a door panel slid up into the air, exposing a gaping cavity, one couple or family would enter, and the door would shut behind them, swallowing them whole for several minutes. The doors would each close in a cascading sequence down the corridor. Eventually the first door would open again, letting a single blank person out, and letting the next couple or family in.

“What’s going to happen, Mama?” asked Maisie as they stood in the darkness, in front of their assigned door, waiting for it to open and suck them in.

“I’ll explain when we’re inside," she reached down and rubbed Maisie’s back in a strangely precise up and down motion.

With a blast of hot air, the door slid open, startling Maisie into a tighter grip on her mother’s leg. Emily pressed forward leading the way for her now terrified child. They marched down a long, black tunnel, towards a room at the end that appeared to be bright white.

“Mama, I’m scared," whimpered Maisie, beginning to feel the terror of regret for her decision to come here.

“It’s okay,” said Emily, her voice colder than it had ever been, “I’ll explain everything.”

“O... okay.”

“There’ll be a large tube when we get down the end. I need you to take off all your clothes and step inside it.”

“All of my clothes?”

“Yes, but don’t worry, no-one will be there but me, and you won’t be cold. Feel that heat?”

Maisie nodded.

“The machine is going to take a scan of your whole body. There will be a blue ring of light that will come down the tube and it will take a very detailed picture of your body... inside and out.”

“Why?”

“This is how we get to take you to the other side.”

“The other... side?”

“Yes... the magical place I’ve been telling you about, where you will see... everything!” Emily smiled at her.

The story was convincing, but a nagging feeling deep inside of Maisie was telling her to run. She looked behind them down the dark tunnel, and saw that the sliding door was closed. There was only blackness and nothing behind. Ahead, was the bright white light of the room they were stepping into.

It was a round room, and the wall seemed to glow a blinding white. In the centre was a tall transparent tube, just as Emily had described.

“Get undressed, please," said Emily, as she let go of Maisie’s hand and stepped towards the tube, touching its surface and making parts of it light up in strange colours and patterns.

Maisie nervously obliged, and peeled off her dirty boots, pants, jacket, shirt, and underwear. Emily turned back to her, smiling, and reached out to take the clothes from her. She handed them over and Emily carried them to a small opening in the side of the room. It was an angled chute. She dropped the clothes in and they slid into oblivion.

“Wait... I...” Maisie began to protest.

“You won’t need them again. You’ll have new clothes, darling. Any kind you want.”

“A dress like that lady outside?” Maisie was wide-eyed again, in hope.

Emily laughed. “Yes, if you wish. Step inside, my darling.”

Maisie climbed in, and turned back to her mother. She still held the carved elephant in her hand, tightly.

Emily glanced down at it. “You can’t have that in there, Maisie,” she reached out for it. Maisie reluctantly handed it over, desperately hoping to have it back in her hands soon.

The opening in the tube seemed to materialise into a hard transparent surface, out of nowhere and Maisie realised she was closed in. Instinctively, her hands flew up and she pushed on the glass-like surface.

“Just relax, little love,” said Emily, her voice seeming to come at Maisie’s head from all directions. Emily casually tossed the elephant across the room and it landed perfectly in the chute, and slid down out of sight.

“No!” cried Maisie, feeling betrayed.

“Maisie, trust me. You won’t need it where you’re going next. In a moment, we’re going to be together, forever. Now stand still.”

Maisie began to panic. Her breathing was accelerating and she could feel her heart throbbing in her whole body.

The blue ring appeared above her and started gliding down towards her body as she turned circles trying to find a way out.

“You won’t feel a thing," Emily said, dryly, as the blue ring scanned over Maisie’s body, causing a very slight tingling sensation in her skin that was noticeable enough for Maisie to feel that her mother had just lied to her.

As the blue ring slid over her shins and disappeared into the floor, Maisie saw some strange symbols flash on the glass and she noticed Emily reading them, then tapping a square as if to issue a command to the tube.

“Let me out!” cried Maisie.

Emily looked at her, blankly, without any discernible emotion. Her face melted away, frightening Maisie into jumping backward in the tube and banging her head on its rigid inner wall. The entire image of her mother melted into a greyish, featureless humanoid figure. It was just like the machines outside. Human-shaped, but not human at all.

“LET ME OOOOOUUUUT!!” Maisie screamed at the top of her lungs, tears streaming down her trembling, naked body.

She felt it.

A heat.

Rapidly growing.

Making her skin itch all over.

She looked again at the blank slate upon which her mother had existed, only moments ago. It stood still and lifeless, looking back at her.

“Mama...” she whimpered, as she compulsively scratched at her sweating skin.

The heat erupted. And all the sweat and tears evaporated instantly.

Burning.

She could, for an instant, smell her own flesh cooking.

She opened her mouth to let out a scream of pain, but produced no sound. She realised, in absolute dread, that there was no air left in the tube.

The heat climaxed, and in a flash of white light, Maisie’s entire body was turned to a cloud of black smoke, sucked out of the top of the tube, and puffed into the air above the factory, forming another pillowy step in the staircase to the sky.