Coughing, my eyes streaming, and no longer able to abide the smoke, I left the building through the kitchen. I’d left every external door on the ground floor open, so that the breeze could assist the progress of the fires inside. Some of the fires seemed to have petered out once the paper had finished burning, but others must have continued. Eventually, like the master of the house, they must have raged.
Outside, I stood for a long time and waited, with my eyes shut against . . . what never came for me.
Thin Len.
I don’t know why, but through the holes in the hangman’s hood, on that fiery day, he only had eyes for the ladies.
I hadn’t much time to complete the next part of my plan. Perhaps the great house burning upon the hill would have become a beacon, and someone, somewhere within sight, or passing on a distant road, might have called the emergency services. In time, the smoke would have been seen for sure; maybe later that evening when it was still light, and once the fire had really taken hold of the building’s timber frame.
With an old shovel, the tool that I’d come across in the cottage, I’d already dug two graves in the nearby woods. To which, in an old wheelbarrow, I transported the bodies of the last members of the API. This was the vehicle that Natalie and Wendy had once used to transport their provisions from the front gate to the cottage, and for decades. I took the remains of those disgraced servitors to the makeshift cemetery, but I covered their faces with some old sheets.
With the very last of my strength, I wheeled them into the woods and then tipped each of them into the trenches. Without a word, I shovelled the soil over the lumps that they formed in the dark ground. A place where the sun could not penetrate the canopy of trees, and where the ground was always soft and moist.
After that, I ran.
Crying like a child, and delirious with what might have been joy, or anguish, or relief, or all of these things, I ran through the grass without looking over my shoulder, lest I was being stalked across the overgrown lawns.
Into the wooded parkland I plunged, crashing past the ivy-smothered follies, and setting aloft the resting butterflies and bees and birds.
I even closed the gates behind me, and then doubled over, sick from exhaustion and terror and elation.
It felt very strange to be driving my own car again. And even stranger to spend that night within my own bed, alone, with no others passing about my feet and asking their infernal, meaningless questions. None stood up either, and shivered their sharp backs at the foot of my bed. And none kicked out upon the ceiling, as if tangled in the weeds of black, bottomless waters.
But I did dream.
I dreamed of a slender woman, who wore a hat and had dark eyes part hidden behind a veil. This lone figure of a silent woman stood upon the end of a pier and she watched me as I ran across a shoreline made of sawdust.
My feet sank, and I slipped backwards, and exhausted myself without making much progress, while she remained motionless and watched me.
Perhaps she waited for another to come and join me, in that place where the black sea hushes over the dust of dead wood.
THE END [AGAIN, FOR NOW].
Acknowledgements
The research and case studies collated by Cecilia Green (Out of Body Experiences) and Robert Crookall (The Supreme Adventure, Intimations of Immortality, Case-book of Astral Projection and The Study and Practice of Astral Projection) were valuable sources for informing the ideas within this story. Francis Wheen’s Who Was Dr. Charlotte Bach? was a fragrant inspiration behind M. L. Hazzard’s own colourful past.
Much appreciation goes out to my editor Wayne Brookes, for his encouragement, enthusiasm and his insights, and to all at Pan. Special thanks to John Jarrold, Julie and all at Gotham, Anne and Iona Nevill, my parents, Simon Nevill, Melissa and Darren Thomas, and Hugh Simmons for their advice or support. I want to acknowledge various beauty spots and places around my home in Torbay, which often served as inspiration and as a variety of outdoor offices during the writing of this book. The bay provides.