Journey XIV – Spirit journey

I have just a few things to tell about the last part of the journey. The weather was bright and the path was broad and rutted, suggesting that something with wheels travelled this way. When I’d started out the trees had still been leafless and the spring sunshine lit the woodland floor intensely, illuminating the cushions of moss and piles of leaves and the elegant nodding flowers that emerged through them, sometimes in their thousands. Later on I came across massive ruins half hidden among the trees and ferns and I once spent the night in the roofless shell of a vast chamber, under a monstrous tree that had rooted into the wall. I didn’t get much sleep because there was too much murmuring and movement in the stones. It was quieter out under the sky.
I never did tell the others what I’d seen on my way to the retreat. I wasn’t even sure it had really happened. One spring day Jim had taken a party outside around the wall on one of his ‘nature rambles’. I went along as well, for a laugh. He admitted himself that he wasn’t very knowledgeable about plants and animals, but found it fascinating and wanted to pass on some of the observations he’d made over the seasons. He needn’t have bothered. Half the party had gone back before we were even a hundred yards from the main gate and we hadn’t even begun to descend the rocky path down into the trees. The other half were too scared to concentrate. What they imagined was down there I never really discovered. Jim was mystified as well, although he too had been warned of the dangers lurking ‘out there’. He’d never witnessed anything conclusive but swore nevertheless that ‘things’ lived out there. Some days the place was swarming with life and you could hardly take a step without crushing something. Other times, under apparently identical conditions, there was nothing – nothing but the sense of being accompanied by something powerful and unfriendly as he put it. I asked if he believed in God. He said he used to. I mentioned what Joe had told me about the lost spirits and he said he thought that sounded plausible. Some of those bright, silent days, the place had felt very ‘busy’ nonetheless. There was a ‘clamour’ to it we couldn’t explain.
We never really became close, Jim and I. He liked to tell you things, often at great length and mostly you just had to listen and as time went on I got a little tired of that. He was a bit too much like my dad to be honest so in the end I was glad to get away.
And so I walked. The high broadleaf forest covered itself in leaves and then gave way to a flatter landscape of meadows and streams and marshes.

My final encounter with the lost spirits happened a couple of months later. I’d been walking solidly, doggedly determined to arrive at wherever it was. Every day I awoke with the sun, made my coffee, thought a little of Miranda and packed my things together. Then I started walking and I didn’t stop until it was getting dark. That’s how it was. It had been maybe eight years since my death, or more perhaps. Often it seemed like much more. I could barely picture what life had been like.
All around me the land became arid and the heat more intense. The plants were brittle and grey and the air smelt of lavender and pine. I was really very content.
I came across more settlements along the way, as Miranda had told me I would. Mostly they were quiet, gentle communities made up of a few houses or shacks in various styles and with or without gardens or fields. Mostly people were friendly and generous and offered a place to sleep and food if it was available. Some places were lively with music or brightly coloured ornaments and plants. Other places were rather serious and inward in temperament. I usually stayed for just a single night, used the shower, perhaps did some chores and treated myself to a meal but I had no wish for luxury or company. In any case I’d never felt entirely alone even in the most deserted spots. The spirits were everywhere. Some evenings as the sky turned purple I could feel them resting in the stones and the trees around me, aware of my passing but profoundly unmoved by it.
I found a rocky place surrounded by some extraordinary trees with thick grey trunks that branched only at the top, making an impenetrable dome of spikes way above my head. The leaves were like thick grey claws. I found a place where a rock had fallen against the bark and there was blood leaking away, red and sticky. I sat among them for the night and looked across a vast stony plain at the mountains in the distance.

In another place, I found what appeared to be a fortified town, deserted and still. Its thick white walls enclosed a cluster of low box-like dwellings, all built against one another without any streets or pathways in between. In one I found an iron stove, in another, a small ceramic pot. I climbed up through a square opening in one of the ceilings and walked across the flat roofs. The place felt like it had been deserted hundreds of years ago, perhaps thousands. And yet the walls and floors were not silent. All night I could hear them talking among themselves and I had to leave in the dark and lie down nearby in the open until it got light.

Finally there was a place where I sat beside a cool clear pool under some palm trees and took all my clothes off to swim. The spirits there were more tranquil and when they came to join me I sensed they simply wanted to pass the time. I never saw them properly – just from the corner of my eye I would sense a movement and turn but there’d be nothing to see. That seemed to amuse them. They told me things about the world they had come from, the things they remembered. Their memories were mostly of hardship and brutality but they told me about it without any real bitterness or recrimination. It was too long ago. That was just how it had been for them at that time. It was nobody’s fault. I told them what I could remember about the world I’d come from and that kept them amused for a time but none of them seemed to envy me. As I lay there under the night sky I could hear them gossiping to each other about me, patronisingly agreeing that I had a lot to learn about life. By morning they were silent again and I moved on. 
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Joe XII – The moral majority

‘I hear there’s been some drama’ he says as I sit down.
‘Nothing much’ I say. ‘Why don’t you tell everyone in advance, about us not being able to smack each other?’
‘It’s funnier’ he says ‘watching people like Harry make berks of themselves.’
‘Does it happen a lot?’
‘Not as much as you’d think actually. Death usually has a calming effect on people – makes them more tolerant and considerate.’
‘So... why not Harry?’
‘He’s a psycho’ he says jauntily and laughs a little.
‘So... how does it work?’
‘How does what work?’
‘The non-violence. Is it like that marshal arts thing where you don’t hit people, you just use their weight to knock them down? Something like that?’
‘Ju-jitsu?’
I shake my head and shrug. It sounds about right.
‘Perhaps. But it’s more complicated than that. The way I had it explained to me... Well, ok, you know, back in the world there’s physical forces – momentum and friction and magnetism and such. Physics stuff?’
I nod doubtfully. I know absolutely nothing about physics.
‘Well here it’s more like morality is a force, makes things happen. That’s not quite right... Let me see... It’s like, in life, if you told someone that what they were doing was simply wrong, well saying that might make you feel better, but it would have no intrinsic power to change their behaviour. Here it does.’
I look blankly at him.
‘Look it’s not like divine intervention. It’s more like, here, the way people feel things should be, deep down, is how things are. For example, a small minority might think it would be ok to attack someone they hate. I mean – with me for example, there’s probably going to be a few violent homophobes about, but on the other hand there’ll be some others who really believe in personal freedom. Most people though, they might not really approve of me, but they wouldn’t want to see me get hurt. So I’m safe. Does that make sense?’
I can’t really imagine how that could work, but then I can’t really imagine how words and pictures get from the studio to my TV set at home. It hasn’t stopped Harry and the others making me miserable anyway. Maybe they all think it’s what I deserve.
‘No’ he continues, ‘I’m happy to report I’ve never been on a boat, or heard of a boat even, where it was ok to attack other people unless they actually wanted to be attacked. I have to say it gives me a lot of hope for humanity.’
‘Is there a no sex rule too?’ I ask as casually as possible. I want to know if Lucy wouldn’t do it with me because there’s a rule. That would be good news.
‘Not that I’ve come across’ he says, a little too gleefully. ‘You might have trouble doing it in the forward lounge in front of everyone, but as long as you keep it discrete it seems you can do what you like to whoever likes it. It doesn’t seem to be possible to get very drunk here though, except for on special occasions, which is interesting. It’s fascinating actually. It’s not like this everywhere though I should warn you’ he adds. ‘You’ll need to watch out once we disembark. On the boat we’re all thrown together willy-nilly. Extremes tend to cancel. Once you’re on land it’s a very different state of affairs. People have chosen where they want to be. Places develop a very definite mood, a distinct personality... Consider too that some of the people will have been there for a very long time indeed. Some of them will have died hundreds of years ago on the other side of the world...’
He anticipates a reaction from me but I have to disappoint him. This occurred to me a while back and I’m not in the mood to act all astonished. ‘I do understand that’ I say and he is disappointed and I’m sorry.
‘Well anyway’ he says, ‘they don’t always appreciate a lot of twentieth century westerners coming along, acting like they run the place....’
He looks more closely at me, trying to get a reaction. It’s all I can do not to cry.
‘Well’ he says, sighing, ‘anyway, you’ll need to be very careful where you end up.’

Afterwards I go up into the bows and look at the water. It’s getting dark. The sun is just a bright spot in the distance. To port I see the silhouette of a strange continent. I can’t stand it here on the boat any longer but I don’t want to go there either. And I don’t want to go home. I can’t face going back. What am I going to do? I look down at the water. I look around the deck. There’s nobody else up here. Nobody would miss me, except maybe Joe. He might be upset. I wish Justine was here.
The breeze is warm and fragrant from the land. The water chops idly below. I could just drop. I could just drift on the current forever. I might feel the way I do now forever but at least I wouldn’t be adding to it.
I got a beautiful woman, naked, into my bed and she still didn’t want me. I told Harry and the others, out loud, to stuff their tedious ideas about how I should live and I still don’t feel any better.
I don’t know why I’m like this. All I know is I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. And nothing that’s happened here makes me think that things will be any different in the future, either here in the afterlife or in my next life. This is just how I am, wrong, forever and ever amen.
Anyway, I think it must be about dinner time.
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Journey X – The Temptation

Miranda tells me firmly that we must find me a place with other people that’s safe and comfortable and where they’ll take good care of me. Then I’ll be able to maybe find a new guide and move on. She gets up, looking considerably closer today, purposefully striding about, in the rain too, gathering up our stuff, talking to herself. Meanwhile I’m sitting on a stump half asleep, sipping my coffee. It’s all a little too busy for me. It’s barely light yet and we had a visitation in the night – silent thankfully. They just hung around watching me swearing at them. I got the impression I’d hurt their feelings more than anything. Well, if they will hang around looking spooky all night what do they expect? Miranda said I shouldn’t take the piss. Things are bad enough for them already but I think (I didn’t say this out loud) if they want to get lost they should just go and get on with it, not keep bothering us non-lost types. They’re really beginning to get on my wick, keeping me up all night...

We pass on through more of the same forested, mountains-and-valleys landscape as before. Miranda says it reminds her of the place she grew up, with lots of heather and bracken and little streams. It’s not that I don’t like it. I’m really just beginning to want to get somewhere. I told this to her and she gave me an odd little smile.
Meetings with the lost spirits are getting further and further apart. Miranda tells me they tend to gather in some areas more than others and she seems decidedly livelier here, away from them (‘although there’s always a few loners about’ she says). The countryside’s still pretty wild out here and we have the place to ourselves. Once again my thoughts turn to the proximity of her scantily clad little form. All in all, maybe I prefer it that she’s too small (or far away) to actually have sex with. I like the way we get on and chat and flirt and look after each other and I think maybe sex would spoil it, or anyway, I’d probably mess it up somehow – make a twat of myself. It’s better this way.

Our final encounter with the lost spirits happens on a night of heavy rain – another night of total darkness and we’re camped in a bog. Miranda is convinced this is the right path but is very frank with me – there will be lost spirits again, and they might not be so easily dissuaded. I don’t ask how she knows.
For a few nights now she’s been running off at night like before and I am once again unhappy about it but not so easily fobbed off with her reticence on the subject. I pester her and tell her I’m not going to ‘leave it’. So she gives in and tells me she’s been protecting me, going out and keeping them away. I ask if that was how she got hurt that time before. She goes very quiet.
‘With some of them you have to be prepared to give them something in return’ she says vaguely, not looking at me. ‘There has to be some sort of offering. That’s the way it is.’
I look at her. I don’t know what she means. I don’t think I want to know.
Then suddenly she looks up at me and says brightly ‘We’ll soon be there. It’ll soon be over.’
She turns to go and I catch her arm and hold her back. She looks at my hand, at first wearily, then irritably. I let her go.
‘It’s ok’ she says, and is gone into the darkness.
I never did find out what it was they got up to out there. The thought made me feel sick, especially in the light of what we saw later. I didn’t sleep. I sat and waited for her to come back and we slept together in the morning.

So we come to a place where the valley becomes extremely narrow and steep sided, with ranks of stunted oaks growing out of the sheer sides. The valley floor is narrow and sodden and thick with rushes and reeds. It sees the sun only briefly but floods regularly and we struggle to find a patch of dry ground to pitch the tent on, hoping not to get washed away if there’s a flash flood. Evening comes. We watch the mists come down and wait for frightening things to start happening. There’s nothing more, she tells me, that she can do to hold them off. We sit and wait to see what happens.
‘Will they hurt us?’ I ask quietly, the rain dripping off my hood into my lap. She’s hidden there, in my cape, peering out. She looks so tiny – barely visible.
‘Not necessarily’ she says, like there might be something worse they could do.
‘What then?’ I say. ‘Will they capture us?’
‘Something like that’ she says.
‘Something worse?’
She says nothing. We wait.
‘I could try swearing at them again’ I suggest.
‘Probably worth a try’ she says without much enthusiasm, ‘if it makes you feel better.’
More silence.
‘If I hadn’t lead you astray you’d have been somewhere safe a long time ago’ she says quietly.
‘But you tried. You took me to that hill town place.’
She shakes her head. ‘I was being selfish. I needed somewhere to rest, recover. I wasn’t thinking about you.’
I look down at her. She looks so sad, yet strangely defiant.
‘I really don’t mind you know’ I say, and I want to tell her it was worth it because I love her. It seems a stupid thing to say, while we sit there, peering into the darkness, watching for spirits.
‘I just didn’t want to lose you’ she says ‘and I wasn’t ready to go, maybe. I thought I was.’
‘Do you have to go? Can’t you change your mind?’
She begins to reply but instead says shush and holds her finger up. I stand and listen. There’s a low roaring sound coming from away up the valley. As it gets louder I can feel it in the ground. It’s different from last time, more like a sobbing or a pulsing, like a machine or a heart beating deep in the soil. We stand there together, listening to it growing in volume. It sounds like a flood. It occurs to me it might be a flood. I look about for an escape route but Miranda is not moving. She knows that it’s pointless to run. The sound gradually expands to fill the landscape, coming from all sides, surrounding us and then we see them, figures of all shapes and sizes emerging from the shadows, changing all the time, growing and shrinking, materialising and melting into the darkness all around us. There are so many of them. It is overwhelming. They cluster around us and press their faces into ours – repulsive, terrifying, seductive. A tiny spikey one with a slug for a tongue insists that I am no better than she is, deep down. A bloated giant bawls at me over and over again to listen to him. A wraith wrings her hands and grizzles that there was nothing she could have done. There is so much bitterness and recrimination. It bludgeons, seeps and injects itself into my innards like gas gangrene – the things they’ve been through, what they’ve suffered, and what suffering they’ve inflicted on others. For that is the difference here. The spirits that have collected here have done terrible things. They are not merely victims. These really are the monsters. I look about me, try to tell them what I think of them but the wind takes my words away. A groaning throbbing lament drowns out everything that I might have wanted to say. This heaving mass of the unforgivable before us is past all understanding.

It seems like hours we stand there as they heave and jostle around us. The noise and the stink are terrible. It is the sound of all the agony and the degradation and the abuse they’ve endured and caused and I can feel it entering me, probing, trying to find something in me to latch onto. They want to know if perhaps I could have done those things too, or if I’d have them done to me perhaps? Or would I like to watch? because that can be arranged. It’s intolerable and meaningless. All their stories are long lost. What they did has no explanation any more. They try to explain their actions away nonetheless.
I curl up and keep my eyes shut – try to keep it all out.  
Everybody has it in them they say. Every man has his price. What would I be prepared to do, hmm? If I was desperate enough? Hmm?
Who is to judge them? Who can blame them? After all, it had to be done. Everybody else was doing it. It was legitimate trade. They were just doing their jobs. They did what they did for the purity of the race, to the glory of God, for King and country, for vengeance, for the family’s honour, for the greater good.
And didn’t they deserve it after all, those scum, because they stood in the way of progress, because they were different, because they were weak, because they didn’t matter, because they happened to be there and they were alone and nobody to protect them.
It was the final solution. They were asking for it. They probably enjoyed it.
Wogs, Queers, Bitches, Pakkies, Kikes, Commies...
And on and on and on...
Gradually their jeers and harangues begin to wash over me, to have less and less effect. There’s no connection. It’s just noise.
I look down at Miranda, her hopeless eyes fixed on them and I sit down with her.
We sit and observe them, these horrors, impassively and I pull her toward me. She looks at me and doesn’t understand but realises that she is safe with me. We sit and look at them and they begin to seem small and ridiculous. The wind and the noise die down and just a frustrated grumbling and whining follows. I can sense them milling about, knowing there’s nothing they can do and yet unwilling to give up. Finally, as morning comes the last of them discretely disappear and Miranda and I pack up and move on as quickly as we can. She looks up at me with a new kind of expression, almost like she admires me or something. ‘We need to get you home’ she says.
The path takes us up to the top of the valley by late afternoon and there before us lies a broad rolling landscape of meadows and woodlands and lakes. It looks like heaven. 
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Journey VIII – In The Wilderness

We soon discovered why nobody had tried to stop us. They knew no one would be stupid enough to go running out into the wilderness.

It seemed like the best thing to do was to move on as quickly as possible. Miranda agreed. I checked the equipment, took one last look the way we’d come and we set off up the slope into the forest.
Later on, sitting at the campfire, chewing on the bones of some sort of wild chicken that Miranda had chased down, I asked her, just conversationally, if that was how all after-life settlements were going to be. She looked at me with a troubled expression and said nothing. I was happy though. If that was the case then that meant I wasn’t going to be settling anywhere any time soon and we’d have more time together, but I sensed she didn’t feel the same way. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to spend time with me she told me and I believed her. It was just... ‘complicated’ she said and then I just felt sad again because I knew she would have to go at some time. I’ve never been any good at putting things out of my mind.
The night passed uneventfully but I didn’t feel sleepy. I watched Miranda sitting there. She was thinking but she wouldn’t tell me what about. It felt like she really wanted to be somewhere else. Sometimes she looked up or turned around – like I’ve seen small animals do when they’ve heard something inaudible to the human ear, or picked up a scent. Then she turned back, glancing over at me, propped up in my sleeping bag, to see if I’d noticed. I pretended not to. (I remember realising, with some surprise that she was about a foot tall now. When had that happened?)
We kept moving – she insisted on it. She said we’re not out of the woods yet and I thought of making a joke about it because obviously we were deep in the forest, but I didn’t say anything. I was just enjoying the scenery. I’d felt nothing of the ‘presence’ I’d felt before. As far as I was concerned it was just another fabulous spring day.
And I watched Miranda’s little body, no longer very thoroughly covered with my scarf. Its hem barely covered her bottom now and I stayed alert for glimpses of what lay underneath, following her as we climbed whenever I could. I couldn’t help it. Of course she knew what I was doing but I didn’t realise I was so obvious at the time. I felt guilty and horny more or less equally and very immature but after all, there were larger pieces of fabric in the bag. She didn’t have to keep on wearing that one. And it was wearing very thin in places too. She said she liked the colour.
Anyway, we travelled uneventfully for the next week or so and our conversation fell into the same half playful – half serious groove it had been in before. She told me more about her childhood and the friends she’d had and places she’d been when she was alive – things she said she’d not thought about for a very long time, things about her mother and the place they’d lived in when she was little, up in Snowdonia. She told me she’d finally ‘checked out’ in ’74, but she’d done everything, and didn’t regret any of it. I knew that wasn’t quite true but I didn’t argue. She had good memories of the sixties and a lot of parties and festivals. She’d seen Bowie and T Rex and The Small Faces and I was very envious. She described for me some of the parties and the bizarre things that had gone on. She didn’t talk about the drugs specifically but I got the impression that they were heavily involved.
And it was good that summer – sleeping in the sun, swimming in ponds, watching the animals and plants do their things. One morning we watched a vast herd of immense shaggy beasts pass by in the valley below, crashing through the undergrowth and churning up the ground. They were accompanied by tall, stocky grey giraffe-like animals and some long-legged birds. I thought it was all fabulous and Miranda was very excited too. She said she was so happy she could show me all this. Then she told me to keep very still and pointed out another animal, something like a cross between a wolf and a wild pig moving stealthily along, keeping pace with the herd.
‘It’s ok’ she said. ‘They’re not very bright and I still remember some of my old guide tricks, but better safe than sorry.’
I’d never been so scared in my life but I thought it was magnificent. Later on, after dark we could still hear the herd going past. There must have been millions of animals out there on the move, each as big as a bus. I asked her what she meant by guide tricks and tried to make a joke about baking cookies and doing the ironing but she ignored me and said some vague things about covering our scent and camouflaging ourselves but I knew that wasn’t the whole story. She was hiding something. I also asked if the animals were in their afterlives, like we were and she said they probably were. They ate and hunted and mated and migrated just as they had in life because they still had their instincts. But they never died, and they never reproduced. ‘They just keep on going, forever’ she said, a little sadly I thought. I wanted to ask how they could survive being eaten but decided I didn’t want to know.
Another night, a few days I suppose later on, we were sitting by the tent looking out across an infinite ocean of grassland with patches of woodland and pools of water like islands randomly scattered across it. It was a clear night and everything was picked out in silver, and quite suddenly I realised there was a sound coming from across the way. I suppose I’d been dozing or maybe just thinking. Miranda looked up at me to see if I’d noticed. The sound was so subtle, like the wind in the trees or rippling the water. It was hard to tell where it was coming from. We sat very still.
‘Best not to disturb them’ she said and nodded a little to our right. There was a ghostly movement in the grass. When I looked directly at it there was nothing to see but I knew they were there. I could feel them somehow. It was as if I could perceive their feelings. It was as if they were nothing but feelings and I could plainly feel them passing by - sad, confused, lonely, and yet wondering vaguely if perhaps things might be better somewhere else.
‘Where are they going?’ I whispered to her.
‘Home’ she whispered back to me and cuddled my arm, like she was suddenly very cold.
‘Where’s that?’ I said.
‘No one knows’ she replied.
Gradually they passed by, in little groups or lone individuals. The yearning in them so strong by the time they came parallel with us I swear I could almost see them – just the merest trace of a person, a feint grey sketch, all substance erased and just this one thought left – to find a place to rest.

The next day we packed up and moved purposefully on, as if we had somewhere to be, but I could see Miranda was even more preoccupied than usual and I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking ‘That’ll be me, one day.’ And she didn’t know if it was better to keep going like this for as long as possible, with me, or to just give in to it.

Anyway, before long it looked like the decision was going to be made for us. Some of the lost were less content to pass peacefully into oblivion.

Something woke me up. I still don’t exactly know what. It was like a sudden drop in temperature or pressure. The woods were utterly silent. I glanced around looking for Miranda and there was just enough light to make out her tiny crouched form staring fixedly at the entrance, waiting, petrified.
I said ‘What’s happening?’ and she just said ‘They’ve found us.’
I got up and slithered toward the door on my belly but she leapt on me and begged me to be still. I wanted to ask what had happened but she fiercely shushed me and made me lie flat.
‘They might not have seen us’ she said in a desperate shrill voice but then there was a sound, a deep groan that I felt through the ground rather than heard exactly. I thought maybe it was a machine, something huge. It reminded me of the sound of the engines, thrumming constantly in the background when we were at sea. But we were in a forest, on a mountainside. And in any case it wasn’t a mechanical sound. It was a voice, or many voices. We felt it become quieter, moving away down the slope and I thought it had gone but then there was another sound, harsher somehow, rushing across the place where we were lying flat on the ground, sweeping down through the tree tops and then whining back in from another direction, flattening us again. I whimpered a little from the pressure in my skull.
It happened three more times that night and each time was like it might never end. I waited in dread for the next one and we were both sat rigidly upright when the dawn came, staring at the doorway (as if something like that would bother with a door.) By morning I was utterly incoherent and we sat in the sun, twitching at every sound.
As soon as there was enough light we packed everything up and moved on.

After a lot of seemingly random scurrying about I had to ask her if she knew where we were going. For the first time since I’d left the boat the path seemed to be petering out and Kevin had told me the most important thing was to stick to the path, whatever happens. Now, here, there seemed to be a whole maze of weak, twisting, overgrown paths, and places that looked as if they might once have been paths but were now just random clearings among the trees. Time and time again we came to places where the way was blocked and I knew we were in trouble. Miranda said nothing to me but her movements had an increasingly frantic pace and she began to mutter to herself. When I asked her what was happening she told me to let her sort it out and there was nothing I could do. She looked at me with contempt and exasperation, then tried to apologise when she saw the hurt expression on my face but there was no time to talk. All too soon the sun was motoring off into the distance again. It was too late. The path disappeared altogether and we came to a slope of boulders, come down among the trees off the side of the mountain above. We hopped and slipped and staggered our way some way up. I knew she no longer knew what she was doing. We were just trying to get out into whatever remaining light there might be, as if that might stop them, whatever they were. She still hadn’t told me.

Miranda and I made it to a relatively large clearing just as the light failed. We sat on a rock too small and craggy to pitch a tent on, surrounded by thorn scrub and watched the night move in among the trees. The forest here was like a spruce plantation. Ranks of tall, perfectly vertical black trunks surrounded the clearing on all sides and receded endlessly into the wet fog, apparently into infinity. I looked up at the canopy of sea green needles above, merging into the haze as night and drizzle descended on us. There wasn’t a breath of wind. I felt her reach for my hand and huddle against me. ‘I’m so sorry’ she said and began to cry, slow heavy tears. ‘I have been so selfish’ she said. All I could do was hold her close and stroke her hair. I said ‘It’s ok. We’ll be ok’ and she just looked at me with an expression that simply asked how I could be so dim. But she was grateful for it. I sensed that.

When nothing happened immediately I asked her what it was we were running from and, because she knew there was no point wasting time hiding any more she sat up, dried her eyes and told me I wouldn’t see them probably. They would come for us, cautiously at first because they were afraid of us too, and they couldn’t see very well or move very easily, but when they knew where we were, and how alone we were, and how powerless... Then they’d come. I asked who ‘they’ were and she told me they were the lost – her kind, the hopeless and the despairing. The way I looked at her I suppose showed my scepticism. They sounded tragic, certainly, but not dangerous. She shook her head. ‘You don’t get it’ she said and at that moment I saw the first movement among the trees at the foot of the slope. She saw it too and at the same time I heard that same low mournful note echoing up and down the valley below, hunting for us it seemed, blindly, casting about.
‘What’s doing that?’ I yelled over the row. We heard it coming up towards us again and crouched down against the rock as it came down. I looked up and all the trees were bending and twisting as if something was trying to wrench them down. But of the thing itself, all I saw a darkening wave in the air as it went past – nothing more.
‘Despair’ she said. ‘Endless despair’ and I was immediately aware of figures watching us from the edge of the clearing, barely distinguishable from the silhouettes of the ferns and brushwood they stood amongst, but undoubtedly there. They were just pale forms standing about in the undergrowth with just the trace of a face – just a smudge for eyes and mouth. I never saw one move but every time I looked back they were a little closer. I swung around and found they were standing all around us, just a few feet away, and with that impossible clamour in the air, swirling like a tornado above us, thrashing the branches about, I stood up and yelled at them. I stood up and I screamed ‘Fuck off! Fuck off and leave us alone!’

Everything stopped. The noise tailed off and settled to a hum. They were all very close. Miranda was crouched at my feet transfixed and shaking somewhat, waiting for the worst and I stood there watching them all, staring them out, not taking my eyes off them. Eventually I couldn’t stand up any more and I crouched down but I watched them all night, with Miranda sat there beside me, waiting for a move that never came. When the sun came along she was asleep and I carried her out of the clearing and along the ridge and onto a well-worn path, exactly where I knew it would be.
After a while I pitched the tent and lit a fire, all the while letting her sleep. Then, by mid morning I had to lie down too, just as she was blearily beginning to move about. She let me sleep.
Later, when we had both recovered a little she said ‘It’ll be a bright night tonight. No clouds. They won’t be back tonight.’ We knew they’d watch us but they weren’t going to try anything. I wasn’t even sure now that they were going to do anything to us. They just seemed to want to look at us. I was sure they weren’t like the first group we’d seen, out on the savannah. The feeling was quite different. 
Looking at them standing around in that clearing the night before, the only thing I’d felt was emptiness and loneliness and cold but they were attracted by our warmth and liveliness. They wanted it and hated it at the same time and if they got close enough I knew they’d extinguish it. I wasn’t sure whether they understood that, or anything, for that matter. They just had to come and find us, to be near us, to look at us. I wondered where Miranda fitted into all this.

After several uneventful nights she began to tell me a few things. We’d been travelling along broad ancient roads cut into the hillsides and with traces of cobbling still visible in some places. We were making good time, beginning to talk more normally, as we had before, but I knew she was keeping things from me.
We were sitting looking into the embers and she said ‘That was very brave of you, back there, swearing at them.’ I knew she was being sarcastic but I pretended to take it as a compliment.
I said ‘I was just sick of waiting for them to do something.’
I suppose I was being a bit cocky.
‘Well you were lucky’ she replied after a while. ‘We both were.’
‘Well it was a lot of noise and so on but really, what could they do?’
‘We were lucky’ she said again, looking intently into my face.
I couldn’t accept that. I’d been the hero after all. ‘I don’t know’ I said ‘I just thought they needed a bit of standing up to. I think they responded...’
‘You confused them. That’s all. They didn’t know what to do about you. And yes, you may be right. Maybe they’ll just leave us alone now. I don’t know.’

Something about her tone brings me back down to earth, or wherever. I want to know what she knows about them, what her connection with them is and she begins to prevaricate again but I push her for an answer.
‘You know them don’t you.’
She looks away, then finally, she nods.
‘Ok. Are you one of them?’
‘In a way, yes. But it’s not that simple. Gabriel please...’
‘Why aren’t you with them. Why didn’t you stay with them? I mean, I don’t want you to go, but...’
She sits and says nothing again but I think she will talk eventually so I wait. We sit and look into the embers a bit more and I decide to get up and throw some more wood on, to keep it going a bit longer. I stand up. They’re still out there. I know it. She knows it. It occurs to me that maybe she fell in love with me, like in those old stories about squaws and cowboys and now she’s trying to protect me from her people. Maybe that’s it. I can’t ask her though. It would sound ridiculous.
‘The thing you have to remember Gabriel’ she says at last, almost inaudibly ‘is that nothing’s cut and dried here. It’s not them and us, or you and us rather. It’s all rather confusing...’ I watch her trying to formulate her sentences, explain to me without getting herself into even more trouble, because she is in trouble. I can see that.
‘But you are one of the lost spirits, right?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. Please Gabriel. I’m trying to...’
‘You’re nearly lost, or something. You said something like that. Is that why you’re so small?’ And I see her begin to cry. I reach out to her but she turns her back on me and curls up. She looks especially small now and I suddenly realise it’s because she’s far away. It’s a trick of perspective. She doesn’t shrink and grow at all. She gets further away or closer. How strange. I sit down and want to cry a little too. It all seems too terrible but she turns on me and says, very fiercely ‘Don’t you start’ and I’m not sure if she’s joking. I look about to see if they’re closing in again. I can’t see anything.
‘I...’ she begins, leaning back ‘I just sort of hitched a lift, you know? With you. I liked the look of you, so I... We do that some times. Like a final fling, you know?’
‘Did you want to trap me, get me lost too?’
‘I don’t... No. Not really. You don’t... we don’t, think, exactly. It’s not planned. We don’t think “Ooh I’ll have him. I’ll make him one of us.” It’s not like that.’
‘But you could have.’
‘Could have what?’
‘Made me like you. Couldn’t you?’
‘Maybe...’
‘Maybe?’
‘You looked like... I thought you might be. I don’t know...’
‘You thought I looked hopeless. But I’m not, am I?’
She says nothing for a while, then looks up at me and says ‘Make us a coffee will you?’ and I can see exactly how she was when she died, that sadness on her face. I know it. I’ve seen it before.
I get the coffee pot out and find some water. She just sits and looks into the newly roaring fire.
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Joe VIII – The Big Frieze

‘So what happened? Why didn’t you get to college?’
I’ve relaxed a lot with this process now. I sit back and look at the ceiling before attempting an answer. ‘Maybe I had better things to do?’ I suggest.
‘Bullshit’ he offers, levelly and after some consideration. ‘You were scared. Tell me I’m wrong.’
It’s ok. I can take it. I think about it a bit more. ‘Scared of what?’
‘You’re stalling. You know what. At least be honest with yourself.’
‘Ok. Err...’ I stop again. I think he’s partly right but I don’t know what to say about it.
‘Ok’, he says. ‘You were afraid you’d try your hardest and fail. How’s that?’
‘I don’t think so’ I say. I sit and try and work out what it actually felt like to be in that situation. I think about what it was like when I had to try and find a job after I failed my exams – with all those adverts in the paper, all those forms they sent me. I couldn’t imagine what the employers wanted to read about me and anyway I knew what they would think of me even before I started. What was the point? It was just a waste of time.
‘I just couldn’t start – it was too complicated’ I say. ‘I didn’t know where to begin. It was like getting lost... or something like that.’ 
‘You were afraid of getting lost?’ He looks doubtful.
‘I think I’d have been ok if I thought I was heading in roughly in the right direction but it all felt so – I don’t know – muddled, like a big mess I didn’t know how to get through. It actually felt like, if I’d started something, and tried, even reasonably hard, and done ok, or even if I’d failed, it’d’ve been ok, but I couldn’t even start... do you see...what I mean...at all?’
‘Tell me something that feels like that – something you couldn’t start. No, forget that – is there something you did start, failed at and still felt ok with?’
‘That’s easy’ I say. ‘I was in this competition – they wanted a frieze for a doorway at a local community centre. They specified how big it had to be, colours, materials, cost. Only the subject matter was left up to us. I had this big idea for an underwater scene that fitted perfectly – it was down at the harbour, this building, the sea scouts and kayak club were going to use it. It was a bit of a dump but they were going to do it up. Anyway, I think my scheme was a bit dark for them. They wanted something sunny and bright – yachts, sunshine, mer-fucking-maids, whatever, but the sea there isn’t like that, it’s dark and encrusted and oily and rusty, not ugly, you know, but not pretty-pretty. Anyway – I had all that. I was going to use all these layers of colour – to get the depth of water – like glazes... anyway, they didn’t like it. I could see they wouldn’t get it, although – they had this local historian on the panel and he was really into it, really pushing for it, and I could see he really understood it....’
Joe is watching me, half smiling. ‘Go on’ he says.
‘The thing is, I was a bit pissed off, because I knew it was the best, and I knew these other judges were a bit, you know, tra-la-la, happy birds and flowers, but it didn’t matter. I’d done something I knew was good. It just didn’t appeal to them. But I had impressed the person I could respect. 'Course, I’d like to have won, and I could have done with the book tokens, but it was ok. I didn’t have to win. I was satisfied with my work. It was enough. So...’ I smile at the memory. It had been a good experience, frustrating, but good.
And Joe smiles too. ‘Ok. I get it’ he nods and looks at me. ‘So what did your family say?’
I look down at my feet. I’ve stopped wearing shoes. It’s not hot out, but it’s pleasant. I never wore shoes before if I didn’t have to. People were always going on at me “you’ll catch your death” or “you’ll run something through... don’t come running to me” but I never did. I’m not stupid.
‘I don’t think they were very interested really. Amelia liked it.’
‘Didn’t they talk about it? Didn’t you talk about it with them?’
‘I don’t think there’d have been much point.’
‘How old were you when all this happened?’
‘Fifteen, sixteen...’
‘So what did they say about it at school?’
‘It was the art teacher got us started on it – entered us in the competition.’
‘What did he say – she say about it?
‘She – she was cool, but the school wasn’t really very supportive – I think she was going to retire, and they all thought she was a bit weird...’
‘But you liked her?’
‘No, she was weird – probably should have retired ages ago. Hairy legs under her stockings.’ I shudder a little and Joe smiles. ‘I know, I know’ I say. ‘But it was a rough school.’ I feel a little guilty. I know they thought I was a weirdo too. ‘We should have stuck together, us weirdos, huh?’
‘I didn’t say that’ says Joe holding up his hands and feigning innocence, but I know he was thinking it.
‘But your parents didn’t know about this competition? Why not?’
‘They’d have just said something like “won’t get you a proper job”, or “what about your O levels?” They’d have agreed with the vicar.’
‘The vicar?’
‘He was on the panel.’
‘Tra-la-la?’
‘Exactly.’
Joe smiles, and chuckles to himself and shakes his head. I think he’s laughing at me.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Oh...’ he looks around the room, thinking about how to put it. ‘It’s just... You seem very sure of yourself. No no, don’t get me wrong. It’s a good thing.’
He studies me. I watch him.
‘It’s not a criticism – believe me. It’s just, given the rest of your story, you don’t seem to have had many doubts about your abilities, as an artist I mean. And I’ve no doubt your confidence was well-founded. That’s quite interesting don’t you think?’
I’d never really thought about it. It makes me feel quite proud. Joe looks very pleased anyway. Somehow I always knew I could paint. I wonder where that came from?
I also always knew it didn’t mean anything at all about my chances of success. To get on in life it’s more important to please people, say the right things, wear a tie. It has nothing to do with ability. If you want to be a ‘success’ it’s better to be mediocre, predictable, ordinary, inoffensive. Popular in other words.
   
He’s still watching me but now looks uncomfortable. ‘So what about your O levels?’ he says after a pause.
‘I did ok. Passed. It’s not exactly MENSA.’
‘And you went on to do A levels?’
‘Only person in my class to try. Headmaster didn’t like to take risks.’
‘What happened?’
‘Failed. Completely. Couldn’t even get a pass.’

Journey VI – Hive

The night-time glow penetrated the material of the tent, casting my belongings in a dim, slate grey relief. Something had awoken me. I knew it was not morning or anywhere near. I could just make out the length of my sleeping bag and the bulge of my feet at the bottom of it, and the discarded clothes and other objects filling the space between me and the sides of the tent itself – my socks, my waterproofs, my papers and pencils, my sunglasses and my boots, my hat and my shorts. To my left there were the openings into the rucksack, unzipped, spilling open, revealing containers of coffee, matches, chocolate, toiletries and cutlery, first aid kit and yet more underwear.
I sensed a presence outside rather than heard it. I wondered if I should wake Miranda. Presumably she was in there, buried somewhere among my damp and musty belongings but I had no sense of her. As time had gone by I’d learned to recognise her scent and hear her tiny movements – even her breathing, but the moment was horribly still. I knew sometimes she went out alone at night – to get some fresh air she said, or to clear her head but I knew there was something she was not telling me. I wondered if she was looking for something, or hiding from something, or meeting someone. For some reason this last possibility made me angry and depressed. I lay there on my back, looking at the stitching along the ridge, waiting for something to happen, not daring to move.
She always said she could take care of herself, and she’d told me not to ‘be such an old woman’ but I couldn’t help it. Every time I tried to relax and clear my mind, like she’d shown me, my head just got crowded up again with images of her mangled body and her crying alone and lost and cold out there somewhere. It was like she had no idea how small she was now. A couple of times I’d hurt her just by being a bit clumsy and she’d yelled at me and made a terrible fuss, but then she’d go on at me for suggesting that she was in any danger out alone at night with who-knew-what prowling about out there. I don’t know. It was like she just had to do it, to prove something.

After what seemed like hours there was the unmistakable sound of something enormous shifting, turning and getting up, moving off and pushing its way between the trees. Immediately there was more light and more air, as if the thing had been casting a huge shadow. Then other sounds became audible – the normal night time hubbub of insects and small mammals scurrying around in the leaves. Had they been waiting for it to leave so they could go about their business? Soon after that I heard a tiny person pull open a zip, push her way into the interior of the rucksack and close the zip behind her. I waited for her to settle but after a while I could tell she wasn’t able to sleep either. I asked quietly if she was alright but there was no reply. I resolved to ask her about it in the morning but when I did she claimed not to know what I was on about and changed the subject. Sometimes it seemed like she had only two moods – angry or happy, that was all. Luckily for me she seemed happy most of the time.

Summer was taking on the unmistakable tones of autumn as we moved along. The path she led me along had taken an awkward turn up into the mountains again, through a narrow ravine and along the side of another gorge, which felt wrong to me, but I didn’t like to argue. There wouldn’t have been any point anyway. Miranda travelled up on top of my pack or straddling the nape of my neck, still dressed in nothing but my red silk neckerchief, giving instructions, pointing the way.
At other times she went on ahead, leaving the piece of cloth behind and making me promise not to look as she skipped on ahead, leaping from boulder to boulder, or up into the branches of a tree to get a better look at the way ahead. Later on she’d reappear, demurely, peering at me from behind a log and holding her hand out for her ‘sarong’. Usually she was wearing her evil grin when this happened, but a few times, after a particularly long time away (sometimes she didn’t reappear until after dark) I could see she was cut and bruised and in need of some comfort although she would never admit it. Times like that she curled up into my lap or under my fleece and fell asleep there. I had to be careful not to roll over and squash her.

I didn’t really find out how bad things were until one night I was waiting up for her – a totally soot-black night full of movement and smells. I was really worried about her and lit an extra big campfire because I thought it would help guide her home. It was the first heavy snowfall of the season too and the first real winter night. The leaves were almost all gone from the branches and everything looked stark and spare. I sat there with a piece of meat on a stick, worrying and trying to get it to cook evenly, as she’d shown me (She was a proficient hunter of small animals too). Just below, in a heavily wooded dip full of brambles and fallen branches I could tell there was something waiting. I couldn’t tell what but I knew. I tried not to think about it but as time went on I became increasingly aware of a sweet, fungal stink, like something long dead and yet hot and alive, close by. I waited for the shadows to move.
When Miranda suddenly reappeared I shrieked with surprise and she laughed at me but it was not funny. One of her legs was badly mauled, cut down to the tiny violet bones in a couple of places and I made her lie still, shivering and stuttering, wrapped in my scarf as I tried to make her more comfortable. I kept saying ‘I thought they couldn’t hurt you here’ but she just shook her head. Maybe that was just on the boat. She kept saying she was sorry, over and over again, and how she’d make everything alright. I sat up with her all night as she passed in and out of sleep and the creatures, not one but many, waited outside.

‘What’s going on?’ I said when I saw she was awake the next morning. The wind was roaring in the tops of the trees and had thrown off every last leaf, but our camp was settled in the curve of a small corrie, a bowl scooped out of the hillside and the air around us was still. The first sprays of the new day’s rain splattered against us unpredictably, bringing down tiny twigs and flecks of bark that floated in my coffee cup. Miranda huddled down next to the embers and hugged her cup of coffee. She didn’t say anything. She acted at first like she didn’t know what I was talking about but then gave up the subterfuge. She was extremely tired and in a lot of pain.
I knelt down to make it easier for her to tell me without having to shout but she looked away so I got up and bad-temperedly stomped off, ostensibly to find more wood. I heard her tiny voice behind me as I went. She sounded like she was might have been saying sorry but I kept going. More likely she was yelling at me not to be so melodramatic.
When I got back I was briefly panicked because she was not where I’d left her but then I heard her calling to me from inside the tent. It was raining more steadily now so I decided to join her in there.
She looked absolutely wretched, and if anything, even smaller than before. I got the fire going and put some coffee on to brew, then went in and sat with her. She sat on my leg, leaning against my belly, pulling my fleece over herself.
She said ‘I might not be around much longer. You know that don’t you.’
I said I didn’t and what did she mean. I had an idea what she was getting at but I didn’t want to say it.
‘I’m not really a guide’ she said. ‘I did used to be... I’m sorry.’
‘But, you said...’
‘I know. I’m really sorry.’
‘What about what you said about Kev? You said...’
‘I know. Gabriel, I’m sorry. I was there when you set out. I overheard...’

I look at her, not sure what to say.
‘Lie down with me will you?’ she says.
‘I need to keep an eye on the coffee’ I say and moving her gently aside I step out into the now heavy rain. I knew there was something. Now I don’t know what she’s up to at all. Obviously I can’t trust her.
When I go in with our drinks I find she hasn’t moved. She’s just sitting there, focussing on nothing, huddled in my clothes. ‘Here’ I say and put the little beaker down beside her. ‘Careful, it’s hot.’ She nods.
‘I just wanted some company’ she says quietly, after she’s taken a few sips, ‘before I go. I just didn’t want to be alone. I’m sorry. I’ve put you in danger. The next settlement we come to, I promise...’
I take that to mean we could have stopped before now. I don’t know what I think of that. Actually I’m not so sure I wanted to stop anyway, not now I have her around. I tell her so and she smiles a little. ‘Thanks’ she says. ‘You’re sweet.’
‘I mean it.’
‘But you shouldn’t have been alone, not all this time.’
‘I’m used to it. It’s ok. Anyway, I’m not alone.’
‘Still...’ she says and drinks a bit more before lying back down. The rain has passed and a little sunlight illuminates our bed.
‘I’ve never had a woman before, of any kind’ I say. ‘I don’t need anyone else. This is all I ever wanted.’
‘I don’t think so’ she says, and can’t help herself laughing at me. I can see why.
‘But you know what I mean don’t you?’ I say and she nods but is not convinced. She’s older and wiser. Thinking about it now it’s just ridiculous, but at the time...
After we’ve sat there a bit longer she says ‘Shall we get moving? It looks like it’s brightening up a bit’ and so we do, packing up all the equipment, collapsing the tent and extinguishing the fire. She climbs into one of my long red hiking socks and I put her in my hood and we’re off.

Within a few days we come upon our first signs of human habitation for what seems like months – some fields of what were once cabbages and corn – now just severed grey stumps, then an orchard, and then, unexpectedly, the settlement itself, which at first sight seems to be a tall, oddly shaped hill, all peaks and lumps with smoke rising from several places in its summit. As we get closer it looks more and more like one of those massive gothic cathedrals but apparently made of soil and wood. Its steep, terraced sides are overgrown with an unruly embroidery of vegetation interspersed with ramshackle sheds and fences and other, less explicable constructions – masts and scaffolds. Our, by now, broad and well-worn path leads across what appears to be a moat and Miranda says ‘I’ll be in here if you need me. I’m not supposed to be here’ and I hear her burrowing around down in the bowels of my baggage emitting tiny cries of pain, trying to get comfortable. I approach what appears to be a cave at the foot of the hill, pausing a while to take in the people working on the near vertical allotments above. A rampant pumpkin vine swings dangerously over the opening, strung with enormous fruit.
At the gate, two what seem to be guards observe me indifferently as I pass inside, into a tunnel that is almost too low to walk upright in. The heat and the smell are overpowering but not unpleasant – roasted meat, meths and some sort of perfume, like stale after-shave, and it’s very dark. The only light comes from a few feeble and flickering kerosene lamps along the walls. A steady stream of fresh air flows in with me. Gradually, after a few twists and forks in the tunnel I come across more and more of the occupants, sitting in huddles or engaged in some activity – cooking or needlework or perhaps writing, settled among their belongings, looking indifferently at me as I pass or minding their own business. Most seem to be in robes or other loose fitting garments and all seem to be more or less grimy and dishevelled. I’m told later that this area tends to be occupied only by the most ‘useless’ members of the community. A stiff wind whistles past. Moving on, there are more lanterns and the atmosphere lightens too. There is a hot, greasy, smoky gloom about the place and a rich fug of spices and incense and bodily odour. A larger chamber, as big as a small church and apparently carved out of the solid rock is crowded with people in more colourful garb, making jewellery and crockery and food or playing music or games, chatting and smoking and eating. Above us the ceiling is invisible in the smoke and shadows but seems very high indeed. The wind carries the smoke up into the roof.
After a few more bewildering turns in the tunnels, a lot of stair cases and ignoring some low and ill-lit side passages (with yet more desultory residents) we finally come out in a huge chamber, a great dome-shaped space with yet more traders and artisans milling around, some very finely dressed indeed. I wander about among them. Several offer me smoke or drink as I pass but I have no money. I begin to feel that I need somewhere to stop and rest and think. I notice there are small shadowy openings arranged around the perimeter of the chamber and I make for one of them. I sit down and open my pack. I ask if she’s ok in there and she gives me an impatient whisper in return ‘I’m fine. Close the top.’ I look around to see if anyone saw. Some people were looking vaguely in my direction. Should I be worried? I can’t tell. I don’t feel relaxed, that’s for sure.
I find myself something to sit on and think about having a brew. I look about. Nobody seems very interested in me anyway. I look up and see that the ceiling is really extremely high and I realise I can see daylight above, far above, through a tiny opening. That must have been the smoke I saw rising from the summit. Behind me, from the darkness the cool air streams in. It’s like a huge stove, or one of those termite nests you see on the wildlife programmes, with its own air conditioning system. As I sit and marvel at the engineering two heavily armoured figures suddenly blot out my view. I can’t see their faces or understand what they say but the message is clear. I collect up my belongings and follow them.
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Journey V – Birds and bees

I remember the next part of my journey through the afterlife as a good time. Everything was simpler – the paths were easier to find and lead through a lush upland landscape of rolling hills and wooded valleys. Miranda the nymph as I jokingly called her was something of a naturalist it turned out – she had what seemed like ancient memories of a country childhood, running half naked through the meadows, jumping in rivers, climbing trees, riding ponies, playing with dogs and rabbits and ducks. I asked if she’d ever go back but she didn’t seem to think it was possible any more. She pointed out the birds and the bees, the orchids and the trees and told me how they fed, how they grew and reproduced. She told me to put away my papers and pencils. She said they were coming between me and the world – I was always trying to make a picture instead of looking at what was actually happening around me. She said I should just look, then, one day maybe I’d make something truly worth looking at. I knew she was right. I sat and looked. And not just looked – I rolled about in the long grass, jumped in the rivers and ran up the ridges, usually with her on my shoulders, to see what there was to see on the other side. I got cut, stung and bitten and bruised in the process but it was worth it.
We were bashful about our bodies although we had both been naked when we met and she must have seen me before that, washing and so on. Still, it seemed wrong to just not care. She wore a piece of red and orange silk as a sarong, and I kept my shorts on. Still, I watched her surreptitiously, and she knew it too – she told me later – sometimes carelessly letting her little pink boobs pop out as she moved about. She couldn’t help but notice my response, which was more than half as tall as she was, but we played a delicious game of not reacting.

We talked a lot more as time went on – her revealing more about her past as we went along, but swiftly changing the subject when we got to “the nasty bits”- she'd suddenly get excited about some new insect or flower or fish and set off with remarkable speed and agility after it, then she'd tell me something amazing about its ecology. Other times she would just come out with something ridiculous and make me laugh. We spent a lot of time laughing but there was always something else going on with her – you could see that, something in her expression.
‘Dad really changed when my stepmother moved in’ she told me one afternoon. We’d been swimming and were just sunning ourselves on a ledge. She looked at me. I could see from the expression on her face she was going to tell me something important today and I turned on my side to face her. She turned on her back and looked at the sky. I noticed her take trouble to cover herself up properly, which was not like her at all.
‘She didn’t like me being around anyway’ she continued.
‘How old were you?’
‘Sixteen, seventeen maybe.’
‘What about your mum? Didn’t she say anything?’
She never answered that, just stared at the sky. She’d told me before that her mother had been depressed and drank a lot.
‘It wasn’t him incidentally’ she said, turning to me, ‘in case you were wondering. He never actually abused me, physically.’  Up until then it hadn’t occurred to me at all but now all sorts of possibilities came to mind. I knew she’d been a bit of a wild child and her parents had let her do pretty much whatever she wanted, including losing her virginity at thirteen. I suppose I knew that people abused their children but I’d never really given it much thought.
‘He was a very manipulative man. There was always this thing that me and my mother were interchangeable somehow, and then she got older and I got more... “developed” as he put it... It was always a bit weird but I idolised him. All my girlfriends did. He was really good looking, and charming, my father. Everybody said so.’
I wanted to say ‘So what happened?’ but I knew hurrying her would make her change the subject so I had to wait.
‘I was spending a lot of time in a squat in Brighton at the time. It was all pretty mad...’ and she looked at me again, trying to decide whether to go on, whether I’d be too shocked. I made as subtle encouraging noises as I could and she lay down again. ‘I don’t want to go into it’ she said finally, covering her face with her hands, covering her eyes. I lay back and looked at the sky. I knew what was coming. She’d joked about it – messy, badly lit rooms, the dope and speed and vodka going around, and the sex. I’d found it kind of exciting at first – the thought of her doing that... Then, as I got to know her more I felt jealous. Now, I could see how hurt she was. Maybe I was growing up. Who knows? I reached over and touched her arm and she uncovered her eyes and gripped my finger. I could see she’d been crying.
‘What happened then?’
‘Oh they kicked me out. I had to have an abortion. I got sick, blah blah blah. Oh look I just can’t...’
‘It’s ok, it’s alright. Look...’ and I indicated a space in the crook of my arm where she could curl up and she came over and fell asleep on me.

Another time, when we knew each other better, I asked her why she wouldn’t go back and try again, avoiding all that pain. It seemed to me that the nasty parts should be easy to avoid if she knew when to expect them. She said it’s not that simple and you don’t necessarily remember enough, or anything, of your previous existence next time around.
‘I couldn’t take the risk’ she said sadly. ‘I couldn’t put her through all that again.’
It took me a moment to realise she was talking about her younger self.
‘But you could settle somewhere here couldn’t you? Somewhere, I don’t know...’ I look about at the view, avoiding her eyes on me. I don’t understand, I admit that. How can she just give up? She seems so, I don’t know, lively, and clever. How can she just let herself snuff out?

The landscape around us gradually assumed a more cultivated look as the days went by (How many days? I don’t know. It seemed like about four months, but I couldn’t be sure. Time just swelled and flowed about us). Fields and hedges emerged more often from the wilderness as we travelled, overgrown and unkempt to be sure, but undoubtedly fields and hedges. The paths remained rocky and uneven, but wider. At one point we came across a shed, big enough for cows or horses and still with stale straw on the floor. A fat grey dormouse watched us from the rafters with the shiniest little black eyes. I saw her mood drop a little in there. She didn’t want me to notice, but I did. When she turned around it was as if nothing had happened.
The possibility of being seen by people made me a little more inhibited but she carried on as before and urged me not to worry – we had a while yet she said. I didn’t ask.
She asked me about my past, and in particular about the women in my life. I told her there wasn’t much to tell, skimmed over my adolescent infatuations and humiliations and briefly mentioned Naomi and what had happened there. I wasn’t sure this was a good idea but she insisted and didn’t laugh too much. It all seemed a very long time ago and an extremely long way away. All around us insects were swarming about amid the early summer flowers, and sun sparkled in the dew on their hairy stems. Everywhere, the sheer detail of veins in leaves, in the red stain in the leaves behind the blue petals, and a black fly buzzing there, and a blue spider, sitting, like a crab, in the centre, waiting for it.
‘Actually, birds eat bees’ she said suddenly, looking out across the valley. ‘It’s an apposite metaphor for life don’t you think?’
‘Not always’ I said, although I’d like to have eaten her at that moment. She turned and smiled at me. ‘What are you thinking?’
I couldn’t tell her I was thinking about licking her entire body in one mouthful.
‘About who of us is the bird and who is the bee...’ I said, lamely.
‘Maybe we’re both birds’ she suggested.
‘Except we don’t have wings’ I pointed out.
‘I wouldn’t want to be a bee I don’t think – maybe one of those big fuzzy mama bees with all her daughters hidden in a hole in the ground...’ and she asked me how I’d been bitten. I said I wasn’t even sure if it wasn’t all in my imagination, and I explained about what happened with Lucy – how naive I’d been. ‘I know it’s not exactly the end of the world’ I said finally, tailing off.
‘But you’re so young’ she said compassionately. ‘How could you have known?’ and I suddenly felt like crying because she was on my side and I wasn’t used to that. I had assumed it was probably mostly my fault, as usual, but she didn’t think so.
‘I despise her already’ she said ‘and I haven’t even met the woman.’

We sit and look and think for a while. So much birdsong, a lizard on every available rock, as many butterflies as flowers. Maybe this was what England used to be like, before we humans got our hands on it. Miranda points out a stork, sailing over the treetops opposite. I watch a crow swoop down from behind us into the valley. In a few seconds it is over the stream, in another few it is among the trees where the stork was, maybe half a mile away. What a way to get about!
‘I’d never do something like that’ she says. ‘If I took my clothes off for you, no matter what the pretext, you’d know exactly what I was there for’ and she looks momentarily sideways at me with that bad smile of hers, tongue literally in cheek. I smile and look across the valley again.
‘I think I need to cool off’ I say, getting down off the wall and standing to face her.
‘Very sensible’ she says. ‘You do that’ and she lies down in the sun, and I look back just in time to see her tiny nipples ping free over the top of her sarong as she raises her arm to shade her eyes. Its lower edge comes up to expose almost the full length of her thighs as she bends her right leg up. ‘Don’t be long’ she says.
I bound down the valley side, through the long grass, grasshoppers springing merrily aside as I go.
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Joe III – Options

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Joe casually after I'd sat down.
‘Oh, ok’ I shake my head dismissively and shrug.
‘How have you been filling your time?’
‘Oh you know, staring at the sea, eating. I found the library’ I add mock brightly.
‘Bored?’
I think for a moment, puzzled ‘No, actually. I feel pretty good.’ I realize I actually feel remarkably relaxed. I spend hours, days, nights, I don’t know how long, sitting up on deck, in a lounger, in my sleeping bag, looking out to sea. It’s amazing. ‘Most of the time I just feel, well, content I suppose.’ I shrug again.
‘Some people get very low’ he says, leaning over to get his coffee from the shelf behind him. ‘This voyage is supposed to be like a decompression stop, or convalescence if you prefer. It’s best to go with it, enjoy the ride, get some rest. We’ve a long way to go yet. What’s wrong?’
‘I keep thinking about home and everything. I want to cry a lot of the time.’
‘That’s understandable. It’s not just them. You’re grieving too. You’ve suffered the loss too, leaving them all behind. It’s hard.’
‘I won’t ever see them again, will I?’
‘Not the way you did, no.’
‘But I can be reborn – to the same life all over again?’
‘Exactly the same except for the things you change. Well... that’s not strictly true... But anyway...’
We pause and I look about, he looks at me, sipping his coffee.
‘So who are all these people?’ I nod my head at the door. I mean the other people on the ship, Ray and the others in particular.
He smiles broadly, like it’s funny. ‘It’s very interesting actually’ he says. He straightens and puts on a deep ‘portentous’ voice and a ‘sincere’ expression. ‘You wish to know, mere mortal, how you and all these other people were selected from among the countless billions of the dead to accompany each other on the long journey of the spirit?’ I nod. He continues. ‘What arcane equation thrust you together on this eternal quest?’ He adds pompously. I wait patiently. ‘Well,’ he continues conversationally, ‘sorry to disappoint you but the fact is these are merely the hundred people that happened die about the same time you did in the same part of the world.’ He sits back smiling to let the idea sink in. ‘Cool isn’t it?’ he adds. I sit back too, incredulous. ‘It’s worked out regionally’ he continues. ‘You were in southern England. We waited until we had our hundred, and we set sail. That’s it.’ He grins at me happily. ‘Now if that’s not proof of God’s omnipotence I don’t know what is.’ I laugh a little. It’s ludicrous. We relax a little. I feel quite peaceful.

‘So why? What’s all this about? What’s it for? Why are we here?’ I ask earnestly.
He looks more seriously into his empty cup, turns and puts it back on the shelf. ‘Honestly?’ he says, ‘I really don’t know.’
Clearly I don’t look like I believe him.
‘It’s true. We’re not told. We, the guides are just like you, except, well, for a lot of us we just weren’t ready to be born again yet, if ever. Or we want to help. I like to think I’m in the latter group. Basically there’s four options. A, you go through the whole journey and are reincarnated, if you think it’s worth a shot – if you think there’s some fairly specific changes you’d like to make, assuming you remember anything when you get there. We need to talk more about the details at some point, but anyhow, option B. Some give up – nothing to be done about their lives – nothing they can imagine changing that would make enough difference.’ He pauses. ‘It’s pretty horrible a lot of it, how people have died, and suffered all their lives, powerless to... Well, anyway, that’s why I came back – try to stop them throwing themselves over the side.’ He stops to gather himself.
‘Anyway, option C is that you find somewhere here to stay. Later on in the journey you’ll find places where people have settled here and there – real little utopias some of them, bloody frightening places some of the others. You’ll see them.’
‘That sounds alright’ I can see from his face there must be a catch.
‘Except it is forever. Wherever you stop, you’re there for eternity. It’s kind of a big decision. You get some time to make up your mind, I’m not sure how long, but after that, that’s it. People tend to get what they always wanted here. It’s not always a pretty sight.’
‘But if you don’t choose somewhere you just go round and round for all eternity.’
‘Exactly’ he says.
‘Bloody hell’ I say wonderingly.
‘Well there’s lots of details we can talk about some other time. Right now...’ He begins to stand.
‘What was the fourth option?’
‘What? Oh, option D. Just a temporary fix I’m afraid – do what I did, become a guide. I need to look around a bit more before I decide. Come on. Let’s get some fresh air’ and he gets up to leave. I follow him up on deck. Standing at the rail he turns to me as I pass. ‘We are going to need to do some work on your past at some point you know.’
‘Oh. Right’ I say uncertainly. I suppose we will. I head for my room.

Lying in my crib – with its cut-out plywood side, linen sheets, watching the tops of the waves and the birds outside (actually It’s a nice bright day out. The weather seems to be improving of late) I can think. I spend quite a lot of time down here, it’s quiet and comfortable, and nobody bothers me, thankfully. I do some reading, writing, drawing, and some you-know-what... I think a lot about Lucy. I know she doesn’t fancy me. I think I can tell by now. I made a twat of myself enough times at school. Still... I lie naked in the light from the porthole and imagine her in a little black dress with no knickers on...

There are really only two options when you think about it – the utopians and the lost spirits. Heaven and hell. Everything else is just going round and round. There must be more to it than that.

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Journey II – The grateful dead

When Kev caught up with me I’d got a long way off the road, up in the mountains. He scolded me unconvincingly and introduced me to a very nice couple, Jeannie and Duncan, who took me in for a while. He had to go back and look after the others but he made me promise to stay with Jeannie and Duncan until spring. Then he reappeared unexpectedly on a horse in the thick of the winter sleet with the tent and other equipment.
Kev is (was?) a stocky Canadian – even wears a lumberjack shirt. He’s decided to do a stint as a guide because he’s ‘not ready to go back yet’. Something vulnerable about him gives him immense strength I feel. He likes to appear very tough and taciturn but then I catch him in tears for no obvious reason and I say ‘Are you ok?’ and he gives me a collarbone cracking, one armed hug and he nods and smiles. I feel very reassured. He makes me smile.
Jeannie and Duncan live in an amazingly weather-beaten three-room shack on the edge of a canyon, close to the tree line. The rooms are snowed under with books, clothes and tools. We were sitting on the stoop looking at the godawful weather across the valley. Jeannie came out with coffee. She’s also looks weather-beaten, a tall, bony woman, always in leather and denim, always in her wax cotton hat. She comes and sits down with us.
‘Still got a fair bit more of this shit to come’ she says nodding at the freezing rain, taking a sip. Kev seems preoccupied with something on the steep slope below. I always think he’s got something important to say but he never says it. ‘Lot of crows today’ he says. There’s some commotion in the treetops directly below us – squabbling over nesting sites perhaps, then something much bigger soars out and the crows go after it. ‘Any idea?’ he says turning to Jeannie. She shrugs.
‘Back home I used to be pretty good but every fucking thing looks different here’ she says. ‘I’d say it’s a raptor of some sort...’
‘But not with that crest’ Kev observes. Jeannie nods.
I don’t know. I knew a bit about the wildlife I saw on my walks but I don’t expect to be able to identify things. For someone like Kev though, who spent his entire life living with nature, travelling when he could, or Jeannie, who lived miles from anywhere in New Zealand and never travelled but knew absolutely everything about every organism in her patch, and read up on the rest, it’s a constant frustration. Animals here look familiar but not quite, and you never get close enough to really look at them properly. Sometimes we hear enormous things moving in the forest in the fog or in the night but there’s never any trace of them when we go to look except some flattened undergrowth. Kev says he’s never heard of anyone being attacked and Jeannie says they’ve never lost so much as an apple from the garden all the time they’ve been here, but it’s unsettling anyway. Jeannie says they’re like mythical beasts. Seems they’re here more for dramatic effect or to symbolize something than for any sound ecological reason. Neither of them is sure if I’ll be ok out there alone. Jeannie is doubtful. Kev is optimistic though, like he has something up his sleeve.
What does Duncan think? Who knows? We don’t see much of Duncan. He spends a lot of time looking after the garden and the chooks. He does most of the cooking and general maintenance. He jokes that Jeannie rescued him but it’s not funny. He didn’t cope with death very well for reasons she won’t go into, and you get the impression that if he doesn’t keep himself busy something very bad might happen. He’s a wiry, prematurely bald little man with a freckly pate, a great listener and nothing is too much trouble. You can tell she loves him dearly, but it’s hard to be around him somehow. When the weather improves he goes ‘fossicking’. He used to work on the railways in Eastleigh, which is near Southampton apparently and this backwoods life style, you can tell, is still a great novelty. The only time he looks really alive (besides the being dead and all) is when he’s heading out into the bush, or just arriving home. Still there’s always the feeling (look at Jeannie’s face) that if he spends too much time out there he’ll get lost for good. He’s a constant worry. She immerses herself in her books.
‘He’ll be right’ he says unexpectedly looking up from his tools ‘Stick to the path, you’ll be right’. He turns to Jeannie. ‘I’m heading off now’ he says. ‘Shouldn’t be too long this time.’ He kisses her freckly forehead and heads down into the brushwood. Soon he’s out of sight. She shakes her head and goes back to her book.

‘You really should wait ‘til spring before you head out you know’ says Kev at last. I stare at the scree opposite, materialising and dematerialising in the passing haze.
‘I’d like to get going’ I say. I’ve stopped thinking about it. I just want to be alone. ‘Well I can’t die of cold can I.’
‘You know what we’re worried about’ says Jeannie.
‘You might meet Harry for one thing’ says Kev trying for a laugh. I don’t respond. ‘No, the path is easy enough to find, if you want to, but it’s entirely up to you.’
‘But does it really matter?’ They look at me solidly.
‘It’s entirely up to you’ he repeats, looking away. He’s exasperated with my attitude. Generally he’s very patient, but I’m being adolescent, I know that. But I don’t know what to do instead.

The essential thing with ‘The Afterlife’ apparently is to keep going. Even if you don’t know where you’re going, the thing that gives you the chance to try again is wanting to. You can get utterly lost, cold, hungry, thirsty, but you can’t die. The real danger is to give up. Then you really are lost. I remember Joe talking about ‘lost spirits’ and I smiled sceptically, it sounded such a cliché, but there they were, in the water you could see them sometimes, and now, sometimes, especially at night you can hear them in the trees, whispering. He said that some people, faced with an afterlife, and the prospect of going back again to do it all over again, can’t face it and get lost. They allow themselves to wander off, or allow the already lost spirits to take them. At any rate they gradually lose themselves, who they once were, and merge into the place – the forest, the desert, the ocean. Eventually, they disappear altogether.
At first you can still talk to them, hear what they have to say, why they couldn’t go back. They are usually the ones whose lives were so horrific, and who feel so powerless to do anything to change it that it doesn’t seem worth the risk to go back. Most are thankful that it’s finally all over. They are the abused, the tortured, the addicted, the chronically sick. Clearly that isn’t me. I’m not self-pitying enough to presume. I just somehow didn’t get my life together and I stopped trying. I really do want another go, although I’m not exactly sure what I’d do differently. But I’m not going to give up. I think Kev knew that about me, but I had to try the idea out.

Now I’m up here I feel sure someone’s with me. Whoever it is she’s not very stealthy. A couple of times I’ve heard rocks falling or branches snapping and then a small female voice swearing - I’m almost certain. Maybe it’s just my imagination. Maybe I’m just comforting myself. I’ve never been this alone before for so long.
Is there supposed to be some parallel between the ordeal we are set in the afterlife and what went on in life or not? All my life I avoided trouble by going off alone. I wasn’t running away – I just didn’t know what else to do.
So I've gone off on my own here too. The forest here is getting worse. I’m not sure I even have the path, the way is so strewn with broken wood, needles and bits of bark and the branches are so low. One minute I’m crawling under, next, clambering over them. I’m down under the canopy, dead brambles bind everything together, and dense mats of fallen needles fill the spaces. It is a dead, silent place, no light, only the cold water seeps through, dripping off the branches. I can’t see where to go.

It’s not that I wanted to spend so much time alone when I was alive. I really wanted to be like the others, in a way – go and see people when I wanted to, go out, do things, maybe see a band – get a girlfriend for fuck’s sake. I don’t know. I didn’t really get on with the other boys. I hated football, and the way they talked to girls like they were idiots. I’d like to have thought I could have been more like them though, if I’d wanted to. I’d like to have had the choice.

My pack, usually so uncannily light, is bulky and impractical today. Suddenly it feels much bigger, that or I’ve shrunk somewhat. I slump down on the forest floor and wonder vaguely if I have lost myself after all. I said to Kev that I wasn’t going to give in and he seemed to believe me but maybe I was just kidding myself. Why did I think anything had changed? I always give in. I lie back and look up through the branches. Squinting, the light that gets through looks like stars in a dark sky. Kevin seems to think it’s very important not to lose that sense of self if I’m going to go on alone. I call to whoever she is again but it’s just the sound of water and wood. I’m getting sick of it. It occurs to me that maybe she’s another one of the passengers, set off alone, like me. Maybe I should go back for her.
I don’t know how long I’ve been going. Time here is hard to pin down. You feel you can account for the last day or so, but beyond that is uncertain. The more you try to keep count the more you can’t remember if it was the day before yesterday or some time last week. The days seem to go on a lot longer than they should too. The seasons are interminable. Space likewise. I’ve literally no idea how far I’ve come, or in what direction. Sometimes it feels like I’m on a loop, going around and round on the same bit of mountainside endlessly. The trees and rocks here look much the same as the ones I saw at the beginning. The mountain tops and the sky, the rain and what little there was of the sun, all just variations on the same theme, over and over. Even the snowfall was thin and short-lived.
I feel it’s been maybe about three months. That feels about right. A couple of weeks of sun down on the coast but then just colder and colder and wetter and wetter the higher I climb. Three months of winter, maybe more. That’s how it feels, just trudging through a freezing wet forest, over these jagged escarpments, wading through freezing streams or black sulphurous mud. I don’t know if I really want to go on after all. Ok, my life wasn’t a tragedy, but is it worth repeating? Can I really make it be different?


I feel the lost spirits about. They’re everywhere, always. Do they sense my mood? They sense company. I sense they want company. Do I want to be here forever? Maybe. Why not? I put the tent up and look out. What light there is, is fading. ‘I know you’re there’ I say quietly but she won’t answer. Maybe I’m insane but I’m sure she’s out there. I lie in the dark and listen to the water. I can hear it running under the ground sheet. Later I can hear something small snuffling near the tent, looking for food maybe. I turn over and there’s silence.

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