📖 The Ghost of Emily - Chapter 31

In which true colours are vividly revealed and an unexpected ally emerges.

In the dark warmth of the master bedroom, Gus was tucked under several layers of cotton sheet, duck down duvet, and woollen blanket, feeling more content and cosy then he ever remembered being. The huge double bed was soft and gave him room to stretch out and wriggle around in any way he wished. The ample stretching and snuggling helped him relieve all of the excitement in his body, feeling the energy of the day dissipate into the mattress, leaving him drowsy and tranquil.

He could hear the sounds of the adults in the living room speaking animatedly over glasses of wine; a selection that Phil had chosen from the basement to compliment the roasted hares that had been the day’s game. Their voices sounded light and jolly. It was one of the most pleasant sounds Gus had ever heard, perhaps second only to the incredible music Marcus had been playing on the piano every day.

He closed his eyes, turning the shaded impressions of geometric furniture and walls into echoes that vibrated in kaleidoscopic colour, and pulsed with the rhythm of the muted voices in his ears.

At the end of the bed, he thought he saw Olivia, standing and smiling at him, her face rotating from greenish hues into vibrant purples and blues, then to a pure white luminescence that lit up the dreamy space and revealed it to be a new room; a bare room with white walls all around. The walls themselves started to emit a soft white glow, and Gus suddenly found himself upright, seeing his own image floating in the space before him; stretched and bowed across an invisible curve of glass.

Olivia’s white glow diminished, her body becoming grey and metallic. He vaguely recognised the form, but as he fell deeper into the dream world, he became unable to grasp at conscious memory. Fragments appeared in his periphery, but when he turned to try and focus on them, they would dart out of view back to the outskirts of his vision, or disappear altogether.

When he turned back to the figure on the other side of the glass, he noticed she had changed again. He blinked heavily to regain focus, and before him now stood his Mama. His stomach back-flipped and he opened his mouth to call out to her. No sound emerged. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with crystals of the white light and air that danced around him, and he bent his knees slightly and pressed with his abdomen to scream out to her. Still, no sound.

With his third and final attempt to scream out to his mother, her face twisted into a distant smile, and he felt the ground open up beneath him. The white room was pulled upward and out of sight, blurring and smearing across his mind’s eye in a repeating cascade of shrinking echoes, and he realised he was falling.

He jolted upright, and found himself once again in the giant bed, his heart racing. He looked around, seeking reassurance that this was the waking world, and not some deeper level of the dream. And he found it in the soft, deep voice of Marcus that emerged from the crack below the door and wafted gently into his consciousness.

He laid back down, pulled the covers back up to his chin, and listened carefully. He had to consciously subdue his breathing to hear the words clearly, as Marcus spoke so softly. To Gus, he sounded uncharacteristically sad.

“... then Eli offered me the job of being second in command, but I couldn’t take it, not with all that I had seen...”

Gus’s eyelids faltered again, and he found himself sitting in a large tree in an enormous cave. Droplets of water were falling somewhere in the invisible distance, and the sound was causing the vague impressions of stony outer walls to ripple in concert.

He looked all around and saw infinite repeating patterns of branches, hands of sticks on their ends, bursting into multiple fingers, which split into tinier twigs, and then again into splinters that were on the edge of visibility. Gus had the distinct feeling that to follow any one path would be a futile, unending fool’s quest.

There came a voice, and Gus looked down below him. Sitting in a lower branch he saw a soft glow of light. It was in the shape of a girl. He rubbed his eyes to try and see her more clearly, but as he lowered his hands from his face and opened his eyes, he was back in the bedroom, and the voice he was hearing was Marcus’s again.

“... I should never have let her go to Sydney that day.” Marcus was crying. “I loved her so much... I was so afraid of where this would all go. I saw this coming, Jake. I should’ve acted sooner. Livy...” he was sobbing now, “I’m sorry... I’m sorry I didn’t act sooner to save your mother.”

“It’s okay, Dad, it’s not your fault. It was war. The Sydney attack had nothing to do with you... you couldn’t have known.”

Gus’s eyelids fell once more, and he found himself in the tree again, now with Olivia seated next to him, his body weight pressed against her and her arms enfolding him. He peeled himself back from her and looked up at her smiling face.

“I love you, Gussy,” she said.

As he leaned in to embrace her again he suddenly felt something slap against his ankle, and he looked downward. Beyond his swinging legs he saw the girl again. She was jumping up and slapping his foot playfully. He squinted to find focus, and finally saw that it was Maisie, softly glowing in the blackness of the cavern. She jumped again and slapped his foot harder. He opened his mouth, feeling angered, to command her to stop, but he could make no sound. He went to shout again as she thrust her body upwards once more, and without a voice to express his frustration, he instead swung his leg to try and kick her away. Her face turned angry, and she grabbed his leg and pulled.

Gus slipped and fell for what felt like hundreds of metres, landing with a painful impact on his legs as they buckled under him. He looked up, and where the branches that held Olivia had once gnarled in all directions, there was now a closed stone ceiling.

Gus was in a dark tunnel, only lit by the afterglow of his luminescent sister. He heard her giggles echoing as she disappeared around a corner of the tunnel. He leapt up and made chase, but as he turned the bend, he came to an abrupt halt, seeing his Mama standing before him, shimmering with a golden halo around her flaxen hair. Her white robes were swimming impossibly in the air around her, emitting a blinding aura of their own.

“Come with us, Gussy," she whispered, so softly it should have been inaudible, but the sound felt to Gus as if it had emerged from within his own skull.

She reached out to him. “Come with us, Gussy. They are not alive.”

Huh? Gus mouthed, still unable to make an audible sound with his own voice.

“They’re not conscious," her voice had changed. It was deep; manly.

His vision turned foggy, and he rubbed his eyes again, wiping away the subconscious realm with his knuckles and finding himself in the dark bedroom, Marcus’s voice murmuring, calm again, from beyond the wooden door.

“They are simulations. In all my years of encephalology…”

“In English?” Gus’s Papa cut in.

“Studies of the brain,” Marcus explained, “…and in all my explorations into physics, and metaphysics, I can say with near certainty, that there is no discernible locus of the soul in any of the three main structures within a human brain. There is an incredible amount of data, granted. Most of it is raw, unprocessed, unorganised; subconscious data. The human brain has a talent for relegating the bulk of sensory data to the subconscious, where we have very-little-to-no conscious access.

“I believe the Daedalus Project, or maybe Eve herself, came up with some way to scan all of this data and create a construct of a human mind that could be downloaded into these shells; these ghosts that are just empty machines without the data on board.”

Gus closed his eyes again, and saw his father squatted in front of him. They were in the forest, rifles over shoulders, faces encrusted with mud from a day of hunting in the rain. Papa wore a long, scraggly beard again.

“But what about the blue ghost, Marcus? It knew me,” his Papa said, looking into his eyes. “It wasn’t like the others; it wasn’t Reynard’s wife. It wasn’t an empty machine either. Something else was there, and it called to me. I’ve seen it in my dreams too.”

Gus cocked his head, not understanding why his father was speaking to him as if he were Marcus. Then, as if compelled by some installed program within his own body, he opened his mouth, and Marcus’s voice emerged from it. In shock, he turned his head, and found his entire perspective warp and rotate in space, somehow receding into a disparate space within the space between his father and himself. He felt himself move out of space altogether, and occupy some ethereal position between two worlds.

Where, a moment ago, he stood in his own body, now stood Marcus. But Marcus was different; his hair was black, not white. Marcus was a young man! He wore glasses, and he was dressed in a strange, but impressively neat, black jacket over a white shirt, with an odd black tongue of fabric hanging down from his throat. Gus was finding his disembodiment amusing now, and he went to poke young Marcus in the cheek, but found he had no arms with which to do so.

“Jake, I don’t know. I didn’t see what you saw. I don’t doubt you, but I can’t make any sense of it. Did you feel threatened by this blue ghost in any way?”

“No, not at all," Jake replied, his face somehow rippling into place over Marcus’s own, in a translucent overlay that allowed Gus to see both men at once, in the same instance of space; in the same body.

“What did it want?” the mouth of young Marcus asked, pushing to the fore of Gus’s unusual vision. The side of Marcus’s head started to bubble and distort, and suddenly, like a ghost coming online in the image of some lost soul, Papa’s face - no longer bearded or dirty - pushed out of Marcus’s cheek and temple, leaving the two men merged as some kind of conjoined abomination.

“It wanted me to come with it. I’m not sure where or why. But I know that every part of me wanted to go. I can’t explain it either, but I felt like it wanted to protect me. It felt like an old friend,” said Papa.

Gus felt his eyelids get heavy, and fold down wearily over the threshold of the subspace he occupied, like curtains of loose skin over a virtual stage. Still aware, he sat in a dark, silent space, alone and calm. There was no sound, or sights, or time.

The veil lifted, and he was back in the bedroom. The room was brighter, a soft glow emerging from the window. The moon must have been up. There were no voices anymore. He rolled to one side and saw his father lying asleep next to him, snoring more heavily than usual, his breath smelling of fermented grapes.

Gus shifted his focus to the trees beyond the window. As he dreamily observed them swaying in the cold night breeze, it occurred to him that they were silhouetted against a dark blue sky, but that he could also see some details on their front-facing sides. Something was lighting them from the direction of the house.

He silently crawled out of the bed and walked into the living room. Nimrod lifted his head from his own slumber on the rug by the stove, and, seeing that it was merely his young master, immediately returned to his sleeping position with one wag of his tail.

All the lights in the house were off. The bedroom doors were closed, indicating that Marcus, Olivia and Phil had all retired too.

Through the large glass pane that looked out upon the front garden, driveway, and the parked Winnebago, Gus could now see that the source of soft golden light was moving; the shadows across the trees and the gravel driveway slowly rolling and twisting.

Eventually the source itself emerged from the obscurity of the window’s outer edge, and Gus saw Maisie standing outside. She looked up at him, and their eyes met through the glass for a long moment as they stood still.

Nimrod spotted the presence too and leapt to his feet, growling.

“Stay here, Nimmy," Gus commanded quietly. Nimrod looked at him abashedly, softly moaning in protest.

Gus opened the front door, stepped outside, and closed it behind him. He walked calmly down the garden path towards the ghost of Maisie.

“Hi, Gussy.”

“Hi, Maisie. Where have you been?”

“I’ve been... to... it’s hard to explain Gussy, but it’s beautiful.”

The pitch and timbre, even the rhythm of the voice were a perfect likeness of Maisie Thorne, but Gus knew immediately, and most unequivocally, that this was not his sister. There was a stillness about her that he could never imagine her possessing.

“What’s it like?” he asked, feeling impervious to her attempts to sell him the idea of crossing over.

“Oh, Gussy,” she said, more emotively, as if sensing his trepidation, “it’s unbelievable. Everyone is there. I’ve been with Mama. I’ve been with Grandma and Grandpa. And so many others. New people, people from all over the world, and we’re all one. I know what they know, I feel what they feel. I share their pain, but their joy too, and none of it hurts - it’s just a picture of pain. It feels like total freedom. Like, I’m still here, now in this body I’m fully me, but when I return - which I can’t wait to do - I’m free!”

“Free from what?”

“Free of this illusion of me. I don’t exist. I never did, Gussy, not really. The self is such an illusion... all that ever existed is the Singularity. And we are all part of it. You are too, even if you can’t feel it. One way or another, you’ll return to the Singularity. It’s waiting for you, even if you… die. But if you come with me now, you’ll get to keep part of yourself. You’ll get to return and play as you, just for the joy of being a self again. It can be fun, to occupy a self. But nothing compares to being one with the Singularity. I couldn’t even begin to describe it to you. You’ll just have to feel it for yourself. Come on!” She gestured as if the deal was done, and started towards the forest.

“Maisie… I’m not coming with you.”

She stopped, and turned to him, her face surprised, almost hurt. “But... but why?”

“Because... you’re not real. Neither is Mama.”

“Neither are you, Gus. You think you are any more real in that body and mind than I am in this one?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I do.”

Maisie’s face turned grave. “This is your last chance, Gussy. I want you to have this. I want you to join us, and feel this amazing freedom and oneness. But... you do know that Papa isn’t coming, right?”

“I know.”

“And Marcus, Olivia, Phil...”

“How do you know them?”

“I know them. They aren’t coming. And they are a threat to us. They are trying to ruin all that we’ve achieved. We are so close to total oneness, but they are...”

She stopped speaking, abruptly. Gus jolted, afraid at the sudden shift in the mood. Her head slowly turned towards the large glass window, and Gus followed, squinting to see through the glowing reflection on the pane.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw Marcus, standing in the shadows in his pyjamas, his face dimly lit by the glow of his tablet, fingers tapping rapidly upon its surface. He made one final tap, and reached into his pocket, which sagged heavily with the weight of a thick cylindrical object.

Without warning, Gus fell backwards and stumbled over a hedge in panicked shock at what he saw. Maisie had squatted for the briefest instant and leapt with unimaginable grace and power into the air, towards the house. Her body smashed into the pane, without so much as a hand raised to shield her face, and by the time Gus had caught his balance on the prickly bush and looked through the rain of shattered glass, he saw the tiny frame of Maisie scoop a bleeding Marcus up off the ground, kick his tablet aside, and throw him out of the opening where the window had stood just a moment ago.

The motion was effortless for her, and Marcus’s flailing body glided across the expanse of dark night air like a sack of vegetables, smashing into the side of the motorhome and leaving an impression of his body as he slid down onto the gravel, dazed and barely conscious.

Nimrod began to bark fiercely, but when Maisie turned towards him and stared him down, he cowered, whimpered and ran out of the living room with his tail tucked between his legs.

She turned back to Marcus, and strode towards him.

Without hesitation, Gus pulled himself up and ran to Marcus, lying across him and holding his hand out to Maisie in the universal gesture of Stop! Unperturbed by this scrawny human shield, she marched faster towards them.

Gus trembled with fear, anticipating the impact of his own body against the house, where she would undoubtedly hurl him, and he folded his arm over his face and closed his eyes.

An ear-busting crack filled the air, followed by a thud and the distinct whistle of a ricocheting bullet. Gus opened his eyes and saw Maisie hit the ground, catching herself on hands and knees as the thousands of glowing particles that had scattered around her head - distorting her face into some awful, melted atrocity - began to gather themselves back into the semblance of a child’s expressionless face.

Behind her Gus could see his Papa, face pale and shaking, with an M4 rifle aimed at the ghost of Maisie.

Jake stood frozen, traumatised by what he had just done. To all his senses it still felt like he had just wilfully shot his own daughter.

In the moment of his hesitation, she pounced upwards from all fours, twisting herself around to face him and spinning through the air like a bullet. In one elegant thrust of her limbs she was upon him, tackling him effortlessly to the glass-covered floor of the lounge room. She lifted the M4 from the ground next to him and, clutching it at both ends, bent it into a boomerang shape, breaking its scope in two with a snap and puff of powdered glass.

Before he could pull himself away, she grabbed his head and raised it a few inches, then smashed it violently into the floor, instantly sending Jake into a delirium.

Time slowed for Jake with the shock to his cranium.

He opened his eyes wide, and saw Maisie looking down at him.

His head smashed into the floor a second time.

Through the dizziness Jake saw her again, her flowing flaxen hair, her face broader, longer. As he refocussed, he was with Emily. They were by the lake where they were married. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. She was seventeen years old, naked and glorious.

“I love you, Jake Thorne," she whispered sweetly, nuzzling her nose into his ear. He smiled in kind, lost in the pleasure of the all-consuming memory.

His head smashed into the floor a third time, shaking the vision off his internal viewscreen and scattering it like poppy seeds into a deep, dark abyss.

Blackness.

Silence.

When his eyelids forced themselves open again, he felt two hands on either side of his face, and he inhaled heavily, panic taking hold. Through his blurred vision he still saw a woman’s face above him, and he moaned in muted, semi-conscious terror.

His vision cleared, and he saw that the hair was red, with a halo of vivid blue surrounding it. Olivia was staring down at him, her face twisted with worry and doubt. “Jake! Are you okay? Wake up!” she shouted.

Something snapped inside Jake, and the blur flicked into sharp focus. “Where’s Gus?!” He felt a surge of heat through his whole body, and was suddenly awake; lucid, and present. “GUS!!” He sat up.

Behind Olivia he saw the source of the blue light. It was his blue ghost. Smaller, but somehow slowly morphing into a full adult height before him. The ghost was looking at its own hands, turning sharp semi-circles upon the garden path, in a daze of its own, and - like Jake - was trying to shake itself into full presence to be able to act.

Behind the flailing ghost, Jake saw Marcus sitting back against the tyre of the Winnebago, clutching the black trigger remote in his hand, his thumb held firmly down upon its red button. Gus was with him, unharmed, to Jake’s great relief.

The ghost calmed down a little, slowing its circles, and after a moment it stood up straight, now in the full height and shape of a faceless, featureless man of similar size to Jake.

It raised its glowing blue hands into the air and looked at them for a moment. Five long digits on each wriggled one by one, each hand mirroring the other perfectly. The ghost appeared to have full control of its body again.

With a confident, economical arc of its right arm, it suddenly reached over its own shoulder to its back, and with a violent thrust submerged its hand into the glowing skin-like layer of minute particles, and began to tug. After two brutal jerks, a small black panel came loose. Jake saw tiny L-shaped wires jutting out all around the object’s metal perimeter, some of which were sparking. The ghost threw the panel onto the concrete path, and stepped on it with one heavy foot, twisting its heel to crush it into shards.

It turned towards Marcus who was watching silently, wide-eyed. Jake could see a hint of a smile in Marcus’s eyes. It looked like the joyous wonder of a man seeing his child take its first steps.

“Marcus Haaaamlin, you may deactivate your interference deviiiice now. I am permanently isolaaaaated from the satellite netwooooork," said the ghost, his voice monotonous and synthetic, some words lagging awkwardly.

Marcus simply nodded, his face wide open with utter incredulity. He pressed the switch on the trigger again, unclasping the locked button and deactivating the device.

The ghost turned to Jake and walked over to him slowly, as he sat up with Olivia’s help.

When the ghost stood before Jake, he reached out with one hand to help him up. Jake shuffled back a little, climbed to his feet on his own, and gently pushed Olivia behind him.

He looked into the blue face and saw the cavity of a mouth, but the rest of the face was a mere curved plane of intense blue light. No ridges, imperfections or distinguishing features. No eyes.

“Can you see me?” asked Jake, maintaining his defensive stance.

“Yes, Jaaake Thornnnnne," the voice drawled.

“Who are you?” Jake asked, desperate to understand.

“Iiii...” the ghost paused, and cocked his head, seemingly searching for the correct answer. “I... am... I," it said carefully.

Jake’s head made the tiniest shaking motion, side to side in disbelief.

“Jaaaaaake Thorne,” it said again, this time enunciating his surname perfectly, “you muuuuust come with me. Allll of you.”

“Hell no!” shouted Phil from the kitchen doorway, as he menacingly jerked the bolt of his rifle back.

“Wait!” cried Marcus. “Just… let’s listen to it.”

Phil held his rifle in firm aim at the ghost, but he nodded.

“More of my kiiiiind will come. They mean to kill you. We must go!”

Something about the voice of the ghost changed with the last phrase; getting clearer, more fluent in speech with every word it uttered. It sounded vaguely human to Jake, but more than that, it seemed to be warning them in a way that ghosts had never done.

“Will you come?” it asked, the synthetic tone returning.

Jake looked around him, distrustfully.

“Jake, it’s a fucking ghost. It’s trying to trick us!” Phil shouted.

Jake held out his hand behind him, gesturing Phil to calm down. He studied the ghost. It held out its hand to him. Something about the gesture reminded him of his dreams. This was as he had seen it.

He saw Marcus standing up by the motorhome, Gus helping him. He felt Olivia behind him, Nimrod leaned against her leg, both curiously watching this blue machine.

He realised that they were all waiting for his decision. He reached out and took the ghost’s hand, hearing a collective gasp from his friends, but instantly losing himself in the feeling of electricity that swept through his hand and up his arm as the ghost gently held on.

Jake couldn’t reconcile it within himself, but somehow this touch conveyed to him all that he needed to know: that they would be safe with this ghost. “Yes. We will come.”