Todd Ronson was considered as one of the most-hated people in Leekton-on-the-Mud and so, when he dropped dead in the shower, the townsfolk – fully supported by the police – spent a full six months enquiring into the nature of his death. After extensive searches and interviews, several arrests, five separate autopsies and a trial, everyone had to reluctantly accept that he had died of purely natural causes.
The first on the list of suspects had, naturally, been his wife. She had been the innocent victim (a brand new experience) of the sole trial that was the consequence of the last-ditch attempt at finding a culprit. Mrs. Darlene Ronson, after quickly collecting herself from finding a body in her otherwise perfect bathroom, had checked her hated husbands pulse with two long, manicured fingers, and exclaimed to herself quite calmly: "Well, I'll be damned! All the prophets of world would have said you would be murdered!"
The funeral was a fine old day. The sun was shining, the flowers in full bloom, and smiles could not help but flicker unexpectedly across the faces of the mourners, before they reset them in state of desperate grief and hopelessness. The coffin was carried in the most light-footed way, and even the hearse's engine seemed to bounce into a gentle rumba, instead of a stately, restrained rumble.
As for Todd: his head hurt. He had just fallen over in the shower. The stupid bimbo, who his younger self had foolishly married had not told the maid, who had even less brain cells than Darlene (and, let's face it, this was no mean feat – in fact Todd was quite in awe to see them communicating, much like a naturalist watches gorillas interact), to put the bath mat back in. He was going to have thumping great bruise on his head. Darlene was going to hear about this later.
He reached down for the soap, being careful not to fall down again. He would have to have words with the useless – yet conveniently expensive – maid as well. If only slavery could be reintroduced. Stupid girl, never doing anything right, could not care a donkey's whether the house looked tidy. He could have di –
Absorbed in his own thoughts, quite his usual way, he had not realised there was someone in the shower with him. He blinked. It was man. A man that looked vaguely like himself. No, more than vaguely. With that black hair and receding hair line, soft hands (of which he was openly proud) and a nose that looked like an upside-down bulb (of which he was not proud, and Darlene constantly reminded him)…by golly!...it was him.
It took a while for this information to sink in. It must have been some bump, to make him hallucinate like this. He did not feel well, either, come to think of it. The shower sounded muffled, as if he was listening to the rapid thud, as the water was fired at the shower floor, through a door. As if he were in a different room.
He contemplated the Todd who was still crumpled on the wet floor. Yes, he thought, the gym had done some good on his stomach. In fact, all in all, he thought he was in very good shape. 'Hot', he thought was the term Darlene used when a particularly good looking, young actor came on the television.
Just as this thought occurred to him, Darlene burst into the bathroom, all wobbling blonde buffoon and tailored, clingy suit.
"Ronson!" she yelled, but it to had the edge taken off of it by the odd, deadening sensation in his ears.
"Yes," he answered, his own voice grumbled out clear as a blue tit on a quiet summer's morning.
"Ronson?" she ignored him. Todd could not remember the last time she had called him by his first name. "I've been calling you for ages. Banging on the door. Now you get up and stop messing around!" she scolded.
That's odd, Todd thought, he had not heard a sound. He was about to question her about this, plead his innocence, when her last sentence thumped through his ears and into his head, where it rattled around before becoming sense. Why did she think he was on the floor? Could she see the unconscious Todd too?
"Ronson?" the screech, that cackling tone that had ground down his eardrums for the past fifteen years, lowered in pitch as she took a timid step forward.
"That's not me," Todd looked at her blankly. He could not understand why she was addressing the hallucination on the shower floor. He could not understand why she could see the hallucination. It was his hallucination after all.
"Oh my god!" Darlene rushed up the shower and yanked open the shower door. "Todd," now she was staring at the, what should have be empty space where the unconscious Todd was. Her voice, even though the shower door was now swung wide open, was still muffled.
"I'm fine, Darlene," Todd said, rattling his head from side to side to drain the water that must have clogged them up and was now impairing his hearing.
He watched, concerned for Darlene's sanity as she reached over and touched his neck. As her cool hands, each finger tipped with red talons, brushed over the unconscious Todd's pulse in his neck, he felt a slight cooling on his own pulse. It was as if someone were gently blowing through a straw onto the side of his neck. How strange.
Todd still felt a little annoyed about Darlene butting in on his hallucination. The dull throb in his head, although lessening somewhat, was not helping his vexation.
"Well, I'll be damned! All the prophets of world would have said you would be murdered!"
Darlene stood back and watched the unmoving Todd with curiosity: the grooming gorilla examining the tick just found on her partner's shoulder.
"Will you please pay attention to me?" Todd demanded, his voice still clear where his wife's was still dull. "Wait." He frowned. "Dead? Did you say dead?"
He looked from Darlene to himself to Darlene and back to himself. Leaning down with morbid curiosity, he took a better look at his own body.
It was indeed true that his face was ashen, drained despite the perma-tan. He had always thought paleness did him no favours, and he had been right. He was almost vampiric with the black hair.
Reaching down, mimicking Darlene's movement with trepidation, he touched his neck. He felt nothing. In fact his fingers passed through his own flesh. He yelped, jumping backwards, straight back into the stream of shower water that was still thudding powerfully down onto the floor. But that was it: straight down onto the floor. It passed straight through his body.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" he ran from the shower, passing through the glass wall as if it as made of nothing but air.
He was dead. Todd Ronson, town beau, loved by all, generous donator and well known in the community as a generally good guy, was dead. How could he be? He had at least another 40 years in him.
Staring at the scene between his body and Darlene, he felt the need to leave. An irrepressible urge to vacate the room where his own body was. There was no need to be reminded that one was dead, after all.
As he made his way down the stairs – his footsteps did not echo on the marble as they normally did – he noticed certain inconsistencies. That was all they were. Little, tiny, almost imperceptible differences. Yet there they were. The wall seemed thinner here, and had there not been a plant there?
He practically stumbled out the door, panicking as the full weight of his situation hit him slap bang in the stomach. He felt winded from its impact. Death meant that he would never eat again, he would never feel the smooth crispiness of brand new fifty pound notes as they slid into his wallet, he would never laugh and drink with his business partners. And they would keep on going, taking his share of the profits. And someone would benefit from his death, someone would be stealing his money from him. Straight under his ghost-like nose.
He glanced over his shoulder at his house. He had, without realising, been walking; his legs taking him to an unknown place although they seemed to know what they were doing. The house, that he had built just after his wedding to Darlene, had disappeared into an odd fog. It was misty out here. Thin clouds weaved in between the trees and over the wide river that came to its estuary by Leekton-on-the-Mud.
He was disappointed he could not see that house. It had stood for everything he believed in, displaying his wealth, his power, his taste. And it had been tasteful, most definitely tasteful. White columns, six of them, supporting the upper balcony in a ancient-Greek style grandeur. Everything marble and sparkling. The fountains shot up several feet, described by many as the biggest collections on fountains in England. The lawns were coiffured to perfection by the highly paid, and in Todd's reckoning, not particularly skilful gardener
As he recollected these details, the mist cleared a little and he glimpsed the serrated edges of the columns as the upper terrace peeked out at him. The water from the fountains sprung up, sunlight causing the tips of these shoots to wink at him through the vague shadowy veil of mist.
"Todd Ronson?" the rusty voice was incredulous.
Todd turned and saw an old man, back bent almost in double, smiling up at him. As the man's gleaming eyes recognised his face, they broke out into tears.
Todd pondered on this odd reaction. He, in turn, did not recognise the man. He was, after all, just an old man. Why would his living self have anything to do with someone so ancient and useless? However, it was a relief to have been noticed. Someone could see him.
As this information sunk in, Todd began to feel a little lighter. His thoughts, which had become worrying and dark, turned to much happier ones. He might not be dead after all.
"Ooooooo," wheezed the old man.
Todd realised he was laughing. An old man was laughing at him. Angry indignation rose rapidly inside him, if there was still inside him. How dare someone so below him – and this old creature must be as Todd did know of him – laugh in front of his very face.
"Oh, how the might have fallen," the old man sighed, wiping tears from his eyes. "Frederick Glee," he held out a frail hand which Todd ignored, "shall we walk?"
Without even noticing, Todd fell into stride with his tortoise-paced companion. As he flung his head from side to side, glimpsing at his home-town through the fog, the colour started to fade from the world. At first it was only here and there; shadows disappeared, blending in with their own objects; and then the brightness disappeared so that sunflower yellow became the merest of off-whites.
"Murdered, I suppose, were you?" Frederick Glee was still chuckling to himself.
Despite his contempt for the man, he was curious.
"Why would I be murdered?" he frowned.
Frederick just laughed like a jolly Father Christmas the night of Christmas Eve.
"Fine," he muttered, "you old fool."
"And that's why, my friend," giggled Frederick.
Todd ignored him. He was more interested in where his legs were taking him, than in the surmising of a doddery old man. The colour had completely evaporated by this stage. All that surrounded them was a grey fog, that was darker in places than it was in others. His companion, who had been in crisp blue and white stripped pyjamas when they had met, appeared as if in a black and white film. Todd glanced at his own arms: they were grey, too. He did not think that look would suit him.
Then he blushed. He was naked. From head to toe. Why this had not occurred to him beforehand was a mystery. Perhaps it was because he had been worried about so much else. However, as he pondered on this embarrassing fact, his arms seemed to grow clothes. A track suit seemed to melt out of his ghost-like arms, legs and torso. He might have remembered it as his own, but he could not be too sure.
"Hehehe," laughed his friend. His merriness was aggravating Todd. "That's better, son."
Todd felt his cheeks blush, assuming they could still do so. After all, did his ghostly self, have blood to rouse the colour in his cheeks?
A few other figures were joining Todd and Frederick Glee on the wide road. Todd did not know the street, it was certainly not part of Leekton-on-the-Mud. He wondered again where he was going.
They walked onwards, the numbers of silhouettes increasing, so their ranks reached the hundreds. It might have been miles when he saw it, although, on the other hand, it may have been metres: time did not seem flow like time in the living world. There, on the horizon was an amalgamation of smoke. It definitely was smoke, and not mist, as it moved in thick plumes towards a sky vanquished of all sunlight. As they drew nearer, Todd made out the hickeldy-pickeldy skyline of an ad hoc settlement.
Although he was sure he had never been to the town – he definitely did not think he would have put a toe into a scummy-looking place such as that – he was just a certain that he should now make his way towards it. Just as he had felt the unstoppable urge to run from his house, here, again, it just seemed the right thing to do. The fact that all the other ghostly beings were heading for this urban sprawl reinforced this instinct.
The closer they came, the more repulsed Todd became. If it was not for the bizarre impulse to continue no matter what, he would have turned and run. Houses, if these are what they could be called, stood so close they were almost on top of each other and people huddled round small weak, colourless fires that released some the plumes of smoke that had first caught Todd's eye. He stared as they passed the first few buildings. They were so far from his own house, with their corrugated iron roofs and attempts at brickwork at odds with the grandeur Todd had perfected over the years…he was sure there had been fountains as well.
They reached a wire fence, twice Todd's height. Here was a human. Todd instinctively knew he was not dead. The was something more solid about his appearance.
"Keep going, keep going," he mumbled, gesturing the crowd of ghosts onwards. "Through you go, keep going, keep going…keep going," he voice trailed off into a bored nothingness.
Doing as he was told, Todd kept going.
"Where do you think we are?" Todd asked his companion.
Frederick chuckled. "You think I know, son?"
"You might have," Todd said in his defence, riled at being laughed at by the old man.
"I suspect we are going to be sorted," a voice said haughtily behind them.
Todd turned and met face to face with a priest.
"Sorted?" Todd raised his eyebrows.
"Of course," the priest replied. "There are places for people like me…and then there are places for the evil-doers and sinners."
Todd turned around and ignored him.
"This seems to be a sort of place of limbo," the priest continued – could he tell that no one was interested? "There seem to be live souls here which means that we cannot either be in hell or heaven."
"There's your question answered, Toddy," Frederick piped up alongside him.
Being called 'Toddy' did not improve Todd's spirits, and so he decided to not open his mouth again.
The ghosts walked onwards, an army of the dead, until the swish and soft splash of water could be heard. It seemed familiar to Todd.
"I lived near water," he voiced, breaking his resolution not to speak again.
"Of course you did son," Frederick replied kindly. Todd realised he was not laughing this time. "So did I. That sound is so beautiful."
Todd, inwardly, agreed but refused to speak.
They led the ranks of the dead towards a rotting wooden jetty. There at the end of it, swaying on the calm waves, was a wooden boat. A man sat waiting for them. Without waiting for a welcoming word or gesture Todd strutted out onto the jetty and plonked himself onto the boat. Behind him, Frederick mimicked his gestures, with more caution and curiosity.
"I suppose you'll be taking us over there then?" he asked the boatman in a friendly nature.
"Of course," the boatman's voice, if possible, was even croakier and rusty than Frederick's. He looked up with a hint of a smile and Todd shuffled a little further along the wooden bench was he saw the eyes, so sunken that they were barely visible.
"All of us?" the incredulous voice was the priest.
"All of you," the boatman confirmed.
"We are all good Christians then?" the priest cast a suspicious eye around.
"No," the boatman answered as his boat filled up to its maximum capacity.
"So why are we not being sorted, then?"
"Because everyone goes to the same place," the boatman explained patiently.
"That is not what the texts say," the priest argued back.
"There are a number of texts," the boatman sighed. "Yours might have got it wrong. I will be back to take you onwards."
As he took the oars in his grey, flaky hands, the priest mouthed "preposterous" and turned his back on the shoreline.
The journey did not take long. The boat seemed to glide over sea, as if the water did not hold up its normal resistance, or, perhaps, it was the skill of the boatman. It did not matter, anyway, Todd mused as the other shoreline appeared through the grey mist.
Each ghost scrambled out onto the dusty shoreline. Screeches could be heard in the distance, or maybe it was closer. They cautiously stepped forward; Todd felt, for the first time, apprehensive. Those sounds did not come from anything human.
Suddenly without a single warning, a giant bird swooped down over the heads of the ghosts. Todd felt the wind from the wings whoosh over his head, but it felt less cold than a usual wind, less substantial. When he looked up again from ducking, there was a wall. It was gigantic in height with a wooden door inset into the stone. It looked, like the boatman, ancient. He noticed on top of the wall more of the giant birds were perched, awaiting the new arrivals.
One of these birds went into a nosedive to greet the crowd. Todd leapt back in horror. It was not a bird. The body, the wings were anatomically correct but the face was that a woman. A repulsive woman, at that.
She smiled at Todd's reaction. "You're going to like it on the other side," she snarled. "There're more of us there."
Cackles fell down from the wall top where the other bird-women sat.
"Well in you go," she sneered.
The door opened and she shepherded the ghosts through, throwing insults at them as they went.
Todd stepped through the threshold after Frederick into the dankest, darkest, most miserable place he had ever set forth in. Even the town they had left on the other side of the water was better than this: at least there had been buildings and a simulation of life.
Here and there were dotted a few deadened trees. The bird-women flew over, like prison camp guards. And there, in front of him, in their millions, were the dead.
He turned his nose up at the situation. This had to be a nightmare of some sort. He could not spend the rest of his life – no his death – here. He pondered on that thought with a falling heart.: that was forever. He certainly could not spend the rest of forever here. An infinite amount of time spent in this desert of death. Already he craved the sunlight, although he could not truly remember its power, as if he had been plunged into the depths of an icy cold winter. But then again, at least icy cold would be something to feel, even if it did not give you a tan.
Todd frowned. He watched the ghosts gather together. Some were calling out names. He presumed perhaps that they were people loved and lost. They were looking for something familiar in the great unknown. He did not blame them.
"Harpies!" someone cried.
Some of the ghosts fell to the ground. Frederick – acting in place of Todd's shadow – did the same. In a second Todd wished he had too. As the bird-women – these "Harpies" – flew down over his head he felt every sensation of happiness sucked out, as if they were drinking it out of him via a straw. Despair filled up each of his flimsy, pale cells until he could think of nothing to do but cry. Not even death could pull him out this depression.
Then the pressure of unhappiness released suddenly. He looked up into the foggy sky and realised that the Harpies had gone on to find some more tatters of happiness.
"Why?" croaked Frederick, who was still cowering on the floor.
"They hate happiness," replied a young boy who could not have been more than ten years old. "So they feed on it. They take it away from you so you become as depressing as this place."
Todd wondered how he knew so much and then realised his dress style was a little out of date. Some three hundred years out of date. I need to get out of here, Todd thought to himself. He simply could not stay here for three hundred years to have new arrivals wonder at his dress sense.
He started to wander off in a imprecise direction although there was a tree on the horizon and there did not seem to be many people in that direction.
"Where are we going?" it was Frederick, back on his feet.
"I dunno," Todd answered, hoping to get rid of the old man.
"I'll come with," he chuckled. Todd sighed: the Harpies were going to have a field day with this one. "There's no where else to go, eh?"
Todd set off at a brisk pace, hoping to race away from the old man but he kept up, something that would certainly not have been possible if he were alive.
Therefore, towards the tree they headed. Todd remarked unconcernedly upon animals he had never seen before: four claw-legged animals with trunks, centaur-resembling animals, tiny people he thought might have been fairies or something similar.
"From different worlds, I should think," Frederick commented, showing more interest than Todd could care for. "I've often thought there could not just be us." He smiled at his own insight.
Todd begged to differ. They did not look particularly human-like, or possessing human-like intelligence. It was probable that all animals and humans came here after death. He did not voice these feelings, not wishing to enter in conversation with the old man.
They reached the tree quicker than Todd had thought they would. They seemed to far away from anyone else, meaning that Harpies were also far away. The bigger the distance between them and the bird-women, the happier Frederick had become, until he was practically buoyant, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet and chuckling for no reason whatsoever.
Todd was undecided as to what to do next. He thought that he would use up hours, hopefully days, journeying to the far off tree. But here they were and barely minutes had passed. So he sat down, Frederick copying him in that annoying manner.
"Frederick Glee!" a call resounded from not so far away. They were not as alone as he had thought. "Oh! Fred!"
A ghostly old woman came running towards them, a smile spread across her face. Todd had not seen anything so joyful since he had died.
"Dotty?" Frederick frowned at the old woman. "Is that you?" He, too, had a beaming smile.
The woman came to a halt in front of the men. Frederick leant forward to hug the woman but he fell straight down, through her ghostly figure. He picked himself up, laughing.
"Dotty," he gasped through his mirth.
"Oh I've forgotten everything about my life," Dotty sighed, "but I never forgot you, my dear."
Todd thought his living self would have thrown up at the sight of the reunion. Daphne…no…Darlene would have been tearful had she been present.
"I'm going off, Frederick," he muttered.
Thankfully, neither Frederick nor Dotty, heard. They were both now sat by the tree, chatting about their living selves, or, more precisely, Frederick was reminding Dotty about her living self. Todd meandered off, again not really knowing where he was going.
Hours passed. He was getting bored from seeing the same things over again: he passed Frederick and Dotty several times (they were too absorbed in the conversation and did not notice him). Then, just as the things had a habit of appearing in this odd world of the dead, something caught his eye.
It was different from the rest of the walled land in that it shone. In fact it was more of a glint: if he stepped here, he saw it; but move back or forwards and there was nothing visible.
He walked towards it keeping at the right angle so that he could keep an eye on its position. If he had a heart, it would have been beating a little quicker. Something that did not belong in the world of the dead, must surely belong to the land of the living…and if there was something from the land of the living here, then there must be a way out.
Taking a quick glance over each shoulder he checked the coast was clear. He did not want to attract the attention of the Harpies. The nearest ghosts to him were the loved up couple of Frederick and Dotty, still side by side under the lonesome tree.
Then, he walked around the anomaly, inspecting it from all angles. It seemed to be a window of some sort. Not big enough to be called a doorway but still large enough to fit through being a few feet in width. Excitingly enough, there was grass visible from one angle. He stood back and examined it; it was as if there was simply a square patch of grass hanging in mid air.
Should he tell Frederick? After all the old man had tried to keep him company through a very harrowing experience.
He looked over his shoulder back at the tree as a screech rent the air. The Harpies had found them. It must have seemed like a feast for those foul creatures: two happy beings full of love and joyful memories. They glided down upon their prey cackling and hurling insults at them. The two old ghosts fell to the ground, the heads under their arms as the they cried out with wretchedness as every elating spirit was dragged from their soul.
On second thoughts, thought Todd, maybe not. He climbed through the window without a second's contemplation.
He had been right, it seemed, for the other side of the anomaly was a blissful landscape with luxuriously green grass and a bubbling clear stream. Todd felt the particles that made up his body floating away from one another but he held them together by sheer will power as he soaked up the sight of the bright setting sun that gleamed over the hilltops.
"No, I don't think that's it," a man's voice echoed into Todd's ears.
He looked over and saw two men. They were contemplating the window with frustrated grimaces. They were dressed strangely too, in sort of long robes made of velvet which were hardly in keeping with the warm sunny evening. One, a elder man with a small goatee beard, was holding a knife.
"Are you sure?" the elder man asked.
"Yes," the other snapped. "Does it look like home to you?"
"You're right. Unless it's the Direring Islands and we've got the wrong place," the elder man thought out loud. "I have heard that they burnt everything down."
"I don't think it is," the younger man said, running his hand through his black hair.
Todd felt his particles try to escape again. He was sure the two men were too intent on the window to have noticed him exit it. Perhaps the setting sun helped, he could hardly see himself. He finally let go.
Just as he did so he heard the black haired man say, "Close it up. We don't want any of the occupants escaping like those ones from Cittàgazze. Try again."
Todd let himself blissfully escape into his beloved sunlight.
THE END