I saw three other forms drifting in the corridor outside our room. And we were the light! We, the apparitions, lit the place. But my shock at seeing others ended my projection. When I came to, it was as if my mind had suddenly filled with shadows and was encircled with those familiar bands of discomfort, that formed from tension and anxiety. All of my fears were back in place.
Nonetheless, Diane was very pleased with my account in the morning. She tells me that my vehicle of vitality is loose and immediately advanced me to the adepts. I have not been more thrilled by anything in my entire life. She says she wants me to attempt a journey further afield, maybe to one of the test sites, and to report back on what I see there.
H, Diane, the adepts, the building, test sites . . . Seb’s mind groped for more specifics and context, but the background remained opaque. The documents were focused entirely upon the sensations of the case studies, and the very experience of this curious disassociation within a patient’s consciousness. He assumed that there was no need for the subjects to explain the purpose, the theory, or the history of a project that they were already familiar with.
He wondered how these files had come into Ewan’s possession. The SPR reports were all written either before Ewan had been born, or when he was a child. But this was material that Ewan had wanted him to integrate into an autobiographical book, to augment his own testimony.
Seb removed all of the files from the first bag. Carefully, he placed the folders into chronological order, spreading them across the floor of his office. And began reading from the beginning, replacing the files around his feet as he progressed.
By the time he had finished the contents of the first bag, it had become dark outside without him noticing nightfall. He stood up, feeling uncomfortably exposed with all of the curtains and blinds open, and moved into the lounge to fix himself a strong drink.
The cold smell of the sea had filled the top floor of the house. He closed the balcony doors and began drawing the blinds for the night.
As he read the reports, he had realized that, had he read them only a few weeks before, he would have scoffed at the accounts and felt awkward on behalf of the narrators and their tone of sincerity within such a scale of communal delusion. He even imagined himself groaning out loud, as he’d always done when imagined experiences were transformed into beliefs. But he now acknowledged he had been affected in a way few would understand. He imagined his experience of the files was similar to someone reading voraciously about a serious illness that they’d just been diagnosed as having.
Seb sat in the living room and stared into space for a long time afterwards. The lost voices of the SPR continued to speak excitedly within his memory. They seemed to revolve, chattering like a crowd.
. . . Silver light turning fast, raising my body into the air . . .
. . . I could penetrate the walls with ease . . .
. . . The inducements are far too strong, but H insists that my fall was a blessing because it led to me looking down upon my body from somewhere beneath the ceiling . . .
. . . So this is vitality. This is health. I had been ill for so long and in pain that I had forgotten what it was like to be well . . .
. . . I saw the roof of the facility and the signs that had been put there for those who can reach such an elevation. I reported back on exactly what I had seen. Though H is ill, he held my hands and tears glistened in his eyes . . .
. . . The spiritual body has no weight at all . . .
. . . the sensation on entering the blackness is now quite wonderful . . .
. . . Once I let go of my fear I feel like an animal freed from captivity. Beyond the darkness, I am assured there is a light everlasting . . .
. . . To think is to move now. My bilocation is becoming instantaneous. H and Diane are paying me a great deal of attention. I feel the other girls are becoming frightfully jealous . . .
. . . Exultation . . . Exhilaration . . . Radiant light . . . my spirit-body freed . . . peace and vigour . . . the flow of energy . . . in the air but facing down and seeing my body that still writhed and twitched in its pain . . . my etheric form . . .
Some of the testimony had made Seb mutter out loud because it induced the full force of a recent dream that had been far too vivid. These sections of the reports he’d also transcribed into a notepad.
My spirit-body bled through, and nourished the silver cord, it grew thinner in the middle and then detached, became vaporous, disappeared . . . from the ceiling, up near the corner, came unto me a rushing and a force that presented an opening, an aperture. I glimpsed a figure inside . . .