[Society of Psychophysical Research – SPR. Vol. 4. Case No. 37. 1963. ‘Mr B’]
This place that we appear in, I know, is analogous to the world I left, and to its time and the natural laws that govern it. We can see the world we leave exactly as it was before we left it, though the light is very different. But we also stand at the gateway to immortality, to eternal life. Of this, I have no doubt now.
I have actually taken my first step on the journey that begins after bodily death, and have renounced my will and been in the presence of something far greater, perhaps even God. But to also preserve my individuality, to be myself but changed and better as I venture deeper, is a miracle in itself, and the greatest journey that a man can embark upon. H was right and I have remained sceptical of my wife’s obsession for far too long.
H commands my utmost respect, he has my faith. Like Christ, a comparison my wife so often made, he has remained steadfast in his beliefs, despite derision and persecution. He has been committed to his purpose, as we must be.
Seb had returned home and placed Ewan’s bags on the floor of his office. And then circled them for hours. Several pots of coffee had succeeded in palpitating his heart and making his skin clammy.
After the shock of Ewan’s death, he knew he was teetering on the brink of a new obsession. Despite the carousel of the past few weeks, sweeping him from terror to rage and back to terror, an awakening was underway within his imagination; a stirring of whatever had first compelled him to dedicate his life to writing fiction, over thirty years before. That unstable core of impressions and ideas was excavating itself from the rubble of the dulling process that had engulfed him across the previous two years.
The unpleasant smell arising from the bags, however, proved inexhaustible and spread to fill the office. Seb opened every window on the top floor and cast wide the balcony doors in the living room to disperse the stale odour of Ewan and his dusty paper.
For an inspection of the rucksack, he’d backed the car onto the drive and worn gardening gloves to examine the contents in the garage.
He’d immediately shovelled the articles of clothing into a refuse sack, as well as a pair of shoes, the soles worn paper-thin from Ewan’s wanderings. An old Nokia phone he put to one side. The battery was dead and there was no charger. An antique Sony Walkman with a broken lid was unearthed, along with twenty compact discs of music, including Bathory, Emperor, Blood Frenzy, The 13th Floor Elevators and Coil. Seb tossed the music and the Walkman into the refuse bag.
From what he could establish from Ewan’s effects, the value of his friend’s estate amounted to six pounds and thirty-seven pence. The money was stored in the toe of a venomous shoe.
Seb had returned upstairs with the ancient mobile phone. Everything else in the rucksack he’d buried in the wheelie bin intended for household waste. A collection was due on Thursday.
The bin bags that Ewan had been carrying contained fifty-four manila folders. They were old, a pale green in colour and instigated a memory of school stationery in the seventies. Each folder had been stamped ‘Society of Psychophysical Research (SPR) – CONFIDENTIAL’. This was followed by a title: ‘Case Studies’, a volume number, and then a date. At a glance, most of the folders originated in the sixties.
The actual reports inside the folders were mottled and issued a fragrance of dried damp, but the text was visible. Each sheet of paper functioned as an official form, was identical in design and filled with black type. The headers of each document repeated the information on the front of the file, but the index classification on each report was followed by the name of the subject who’d given testimony. Some of the same names appeared across multiple reports in the first few folders.
Randomly removing reports from the bin liners, Seb read haphazardly but compulsively. His reaction became fascination combined with horror.
[SPR. Vol. 7. Case No. 28. 1963. Mrs K. Harlow]
I found myself at a great height again. I looked down upon the world from a distance that I found terrible. So much so that I came to quite shaken, and gripped by an impression that a vast expanse of black space had just surrounded me. The tiny white bed from which I had risen had been visible below. And yet, I knew, in some other form, that I had been inside that bed the whole time.
[SPR. Vol. 10. Case No. 107. 1963.
Mrs Ruby McDougal]