IT WAS VERY strange and comforting to know that no matter how far I walked, I could turn and find James ten feet behind me. We did a few tentative experiments, and discovered three things for certain: firstly, the person in the grey couldn’t just walk back through the door – they had to be dragged unresisting across the threshold; secondly, only one of us could be there at a time – well, this was an assumption on our part, and there was no way we would risk testing it again because one shot of that door sealing itself shut was enough for both of us; and thirdly, neither of us could stand being in the grey for very long.
Hard as it was to keep track of time, we figured the longest either of us had lasted was fifteen minutes before we flopped to the ground with our hands clasped to our ears, our eyes turned beseechingly to the door. How Lorry and Francis had survived for so long in that awful place was a mystery to me; but I no longer wondered why both of them were a little cracked in the head.
The landscape within the grey never changed; no figures came out of the fog; no sounds reached us, no message more definite than that palpitating sense of horror. It was a mindless forward slog, with no end. We were getting nowhere. What did Laurence want from us?
We were soon too tired to talk, and even the buzz of our thoughts through the telegraph wire of the rope became nothing but an exhausted drizzle of sound. I had no idea what my thoughts sounded like to James, but I hoped they gave him comfort, because when it was my turn out in the grey his unending rounds of ‘Hail Mary’ and ‘Our Father’ and ‘Glory Be’ kept me going.
During my turns in the relative tranquillity of the trench, holding the lifeline as James trudged on, I tried to think things through. I thought, in a dim, unfocused kind of way, about Lorry and Francis and their seventy-year hunt through the grey. Two terrified ghosts, desperate to find each other. I thought of James and myself, anchored by our living bodies to the world: ghosts but not ghosts, trying to do the same.
Ghosts, but not ghosts.
I tried to catch this thought – to make sense of it – but James’s thoughts kept drumming away in my head, soothing me, lulling me, making it hard to think. I felt like my brain was wrapped in cottonwool, like I was sleepwalking on a treadmill, slogging on with no purpose. Getting nowhere.
My eyes snapped open and my hands tightened around the rough coils of the rope. I stared at James’s toiling back. We were like sleepwalkers; we really were. We were keeping each other too calm and too protected. Connected by the rope, we found the grey horrible, almost unbearable. Without the rope, it was shattering; it was a deadly, shattering torture. But it was focused. It was real.
We were real.
I suddenly understood. We were keeping each other safe out there, but we were also keeping each other dim. We were trudging along, shadows in the shadows, when we should have been out there shouting – the only living souls in the world of the dead, screaming our heads off, glowing like torches, making ourselves known.
I swallowed. I couldn’t ask James to do that. He hadn’t asked for any of this. I was the one who’d taken the sleeping pills. I was the one who’d started this bloody dream. He’d just fallen asleep, poor bastard, and now here he was, keeping me safe, taking my place.
James, I thought. Stop.
He lurched to a halt, hunched and wary. What is it? Even his thoughts were a whisper. What do you see?
It’s okay. I don’t see anything. I just want you to come back.
He ducked his head around to look at me, his face distorted with the effort of staying in that place. Are you alright?
I’m fine.
I can stay a good bit longer. I think I’m getting used to it.
I had to smile at that. I could feel just how not used to it he was. I know you can. But I have an idea. I need to go out there now.
Our eyes met, and he frowned. I wasn’t sure how well he could read me; my thoughts were such a jumble when compared to his orderly prayers. Hopefully they made no sense to him.
It’s alright, Mr Hueston, I’m not going to do anything stupid.
He looked away for a moment, into the distorted non-depths. I could see him jerking, shifting his weight under the unending assault of the air. For a moment he lifted his hands from his ears, and I knew then that he had some small inkling of what I was at. He let the grey rush in at him. He opened himself to it.
His jaw tightened immediately and his eyes narrowed. I tried to keep my own thoughts low and unobtrusive. His pain burnt up the rope to me, and I ground my teeth at the electric strength of it. He barely lasted a minute before ducking his head and slapping his hands back into place.
Jesuuus Chriiist.
You . . . you okay, Mr Hueston?
He didn’t answer, just kept cursing in that painful whisper. Jesuuuus. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Mr Hueston?
I’m . . . I’m fine.
Did you hear anything?
But he didn’t answer me. He just dropped to the ground like a broken doll and curled around the pain, waiting for me to pull him in. He didn’t even grip the rope the way we’d both got into the habit of; he just let the slack tighten against the loop that was knotted around his shoulder and lay like a dead weight as I heaved him over the threshold.
I knelt down beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. He flopped onto his back, gaping like a fish. ‘Mr Hueston? Mr Hueston? You okay?’
He closed his eyes and nodded, put his hand on my arm, squeezed reassuringly, and sat up.
‘No,’ he said, his eyes still shut tight.
‘Huh?’
No. You’re not doing it.’ ‘
He began to stand, and I shook off his hand and got to my feet at the same time. When he finally let go of his head and raised his eyes to mine, I had already backed to the threshold, my face set like stone. His expression fell at the sight of me. He lowered his hands as if in slow motion.
Boy?’ he whispered, looking me up and down. ‘What . . . ?’ ‘
I looked down, expecting to see Lorry’s grubby uniform, his dusty army boots. But instead I saw my new brown cords, my runners, my cream poloneck jumper. It was with dreamlike astonishment that I held my own two hands in front of my face. My own hands, not Lorry’s! I looked back at James. He was still the same, still young Shamie, and I knew now that it was because of Lorry. That’s how Lorry saw him, and that’s how James would remain as long as he was here in Lorry’s dream-place. But me, I was myself again. I was acting for myself.
‘What did you hear out there?’ I asked, gentle now, because I knew that James was going to let me go.
‘Lorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I heard Lorry. Screaming my name. And the artillery shells – the bloody Jack Johnsons – trying to drown him out as usual. But it was him. And I felt him. Here!’ He thumped his chest and there were tears in his eyes again, shivering but not falling, on the curve of his bottom lid. ‘It were as though I only lost him yesterday. The pain . . . the pain of it . . . ’
‘Like a hole blown through you,’ I whispered, and he nodded.
We’ve been doing this all wrong, James. We’ve been thinking like people. But we’re not just people here, are we? We’re living ghosts. We’re living memories. We’re the bridge between then and now – the signal that will guide them home.
What are you going to do?
I shrugged. ‘I’m just going to wait,’ I said. ‘Wait and see what happens. I think we’ve tried too hard, Mr Hueston. I think . . . I think I’m just going to stand still and shout.’
He looked out at the grey. But it’s awful out there.
I think it’s much worse than we’ve been letting ourselves feel. I held up the rope. This has been sheltering us from it, I think. I think it unfocuses us.
James’s eyes widened in comprehension, and he reached for me. I stepped into the grey before he could touch me, and he became a shimmering watcher once more. The grey pressed around me. My grief for Dom swamped me in a crippling tide and I bent, my hands pressed to my temples. Through squinted eyes, I saw James flounder as he dealt with his terror. Then he took a deep breath, and seemed to pull himself together. He stooped and picked up the rope.
I’m with you, son, he thought. I’m with you.
It took me a moment to recover enough to lift my head and force my hands away from my ears. James’s face fell as I lifted the loop of rope from my shoulders.
What are you doing? NO!
It’s alright, I thought, as I laid the coil on the ground. Don’t worry.
Just before I let go, I heard him shout, You’re burning! You’re burning like fire!