5.

That night found Thor on his knees on the kitchen floor staring at the oven in an intensity of confusion. He knew, logically, that it would make no difference if he looked away for a few minutes, but he was not sure he could bring himself to take the risk. He only moved to go check the energy inverter meter every few minutes to see exactly how much this was eating up. It was a lot, compared to everything else. He had gone around the house that evening checking out all the energy appliances and how much they cost to run, comparing it to the levels on the inverter screen. In the city there had always been people or systems to do this for him, and each individual building had not been so entirely dependent on just its own energy source, but out here it was different. If he ran out, he ran out until the solar panels caught him some more, as though the sunlight were butterflies in a net. By the time he had poked the potato and deemed it to be of an edible softness he realised he would only be able to spend maybe four minutes talking to his mother later that night.

As he sat down to dinner, however, he decided that it was completely worth it. He had found a little leftover cheese in the cool box and a couple of tomatoes from the garden that Mjoll had pointed out to him, and these all combined with his very first home baked potato to make what had to be the best meal he had ever eaten. The outside was as crispy as the inside was fluffy and he almost could not wait to watch the butter melt before eating it. The tomatoes tasted so different from what he knew of tomatoes that they might have been a different food stuff. These were almost warm with deliciousness, tangy with outdoor flavour. He could have eaten the whole meal twice.

Afterwards he got on the laptop and called his mother in the city. It was strange to see her again, so far away and from a place like this. If she was missing him more than it was acceptable to say she did not let it show. She rarely let slip any negative emotion she may have felt and it worried him. He wished almost that she would just so that he could know rather than worrying out the possibilities.

The computer cut out just as they were saying goodbye and, with the house gone dark, he knew there would be no more energy until morning. He lit a candle to take to bed with a combined feeling of fear and excitement. If the shadows came tonight, if they did that strange dance, there would not even be a light to turn on.

But the shadows did not come, did not play with him, tease him or torment him, and his dreams too, were strangely innocuous after last night. He had no sensation as he had done since he moved in of their being anything else in the house with him. He knew it would have been sensible to feel relieved but somehow he did not. He woke up the next morning missing the shadows and their games and half wishing they would come back.

Thor scowled at the inverter that morning, noticing that it was showing no sign of the available energy having gone up since yesterday. He knew he had slept at least two hours after the sun came up and was not sure if that was right. He tried a light switch; that still wasn't working either. But then, he had not been here long enough to calculate it all effectively yet and he was aware that he first night's decision to leave the light on would cripple him a little. He decided not to worry about it too much; he had plans out of the house for the day and there would doubtless be something to work with when he got back.

That morning he walked into Whitstable. From the clifftop path he came to the beach first. It was nothing like the beaches he had seen at Calais port on the way out here; long dark sandy stretches. Instead he found strips of pebbled slopes, with low wooden structures running between them stretching all the way out in front of the buildings and around to the next curve in the cliffs. The sea was far out when he came down and to look out for the tideline drew his eye across a vaster panorama than he had ever seen. He had heard the word horizon before and never been able to picture it – he supposed this was what it meant – being able to see where the sky met the water, the gentle tones of grey diving into one another, gently shimmering in the distance. He looked out to sea for a long time.

Walking up the promenade towards where the houses really started, Thor felt as though everything jagged and blocked up in his life was coming loose and smoothing over. He listened idly to the gulls call and the waves pull at the stones, the gentle breathing of the beach all around him and felt as though it could hypnotise him so gently and casually he would not know it had happened.

So many smells too he breathed out in joyous freedom of knowing that he lived here now and could perhaps one day become used to such things. Salt and stone and dried seaweed and, as he turned up a road onto the high street, something unbelievable, like hot potatoes and grease and fish that made him stop and close his eyes, wondering if he could eat the very smell. He had read about fish and chips in books but nothing could have prepared him for the taste; fat chips and fresh fish, lightly battered, that the man took great pride in telling him came from the harbour not thirty metres away where fishermen still plied a trade that had been going since Roman times. History regardless, the fish was mouth wateringly delicious.

By the time he finally made it to Mjoll's it was early afternoon. She rolled her eyes at him and all too neatly outlined all the things he had done that she had known would keep him from visiting until the afternoon when he had said he would be round in the morning. Nevertheless, when he decided to head off, she told him that the theatre proprietor was expecting him and that she had popped round yesterday to let him know that Thor would be coming. Thor was surprised and grateful enough only to glare at her a little for immediately assuming that that was where he was headed next. Anyway, it had been his plans, so he could not complain too much.

The theatre stood a little further up the high street, a curved road heading inland on the edge of the town, the last building in the street; a peeling, whitewashed square of a building that was probably the height of modernity in the late twentieth century. The more recent addition of its solar panels ran like a dark shadow all the way down the front part of the roof, looking out towards the sea in the hope of glimpsing the best of the sunlight. A couple of cracked glass cases by the main door housed fading posters for shows a good while out of date. Inside Thor found a man in the ticket booth who grunted an acknowledgement, told him he didn't usually even come over here on a week day, and told Thor to "Knock yourself out" when Thor asked if he could have a look round the place.

A dingy flight of steps off to the right led Thor through a door and into a small waiting area, flanked by a darkened bar along the right. The main lights had been put on, he supposed for his benefit, but the ones above the drinks cabinets were all out and the room fluttered with shadows and the echoes of his feet. He could hear his own breathing very loudly in the quiet building and breathed out loudly in the hope that it would make him breathe more quietly thereafter.

He turned off to the left, pushing open one of the two large swing doors that led into the auditorium. He heard a creak as though the other set of doors had opened too, though they had not, and felt, once again like he was not alone. As though one of the hovering shadows had disengaged itself from around the bar and come to join him. Without being able to see anything this time Thor felt the same sensation of being approached as he had felt when the pale shadow crawled onto his bed, only this time with no accompanying sense of fear.

"Hello," he said quietly, into the empty tiers, feeling a little crazy but pleased to do so all the same – "Little shadow," he added, not knowing what else to call his curious, invisible companion. He let go of the door he had opened to come in here and a playful wind tickled around his ears as if in reply. He was almost tempted to smile, chuckle beneath the caress or blow kisses back to the wind. He did none of them physically, but felt as though the shadows knew he was thinking it.

Thor walked down the aisles between the seats, towards the stage, the balcony looming over him like a thundercloud. In its light his shadow beside him looked strange; slighter, smaller and – he noticed as he stopped walking – out of step with him.

It was not his shadow.

"Hey –" he began, looking down. He moved a couple of steps. The shadow moved with him. He walked a few; it did not quite keep up. All of a sudden he heard, quite clearly a warm but echoing giggle from behind the stage curtain and heard footsteps running ahead of him down the aisle. When he looked to the side this time his shadow was his own again.

Now that he was approaching the stage, Thor found that he did not want to look behind the red velvet curtain. He also knew that he was going to. The shadow was deeper down here and towards the front of the stage centre he could see a small orchestra pit, only half gated, that looked as though it would like him to fall into it. He skirted to the left of it and up the wooden steps to the stage. When he put his hand on the curtain winch the place fell terribly silent. So silent he could hear the breathing coming from the other side of the curtain. It was frightened breathing now, deep and slightly panicky as though – Thor did not know where the idea came from but it came very strongly – as though the other had realised for the first time the reality of where they were and did not like it at all.

As Thor rolled up the curtain from the winch the breathing turned into a soft and then a terrified sobbing, not, he felt, in the hope that Thor would stop but in the knowledge that they both would soon be facing the naked stage. When the curtain was up and Thor stepped out onto the stage the first thing he heard was footsteps running off into the wings.

He looked out over the darkened auditorium at the red seats turned black in the shadow, up at the two boxes, one either side of the stage, looking down on him like big bellied beasts. He felt a dread standing here that actually alleviated a little when he heard the sound of singing coming from the wings.

It was a soft singing, filled with echoes and far away as though through a television set that had been all but muted. Thor followed it, cautiously off the stage and into the wings. A long white corridor curved around the back of the stage and off towards the changing rooms. Down here the voice was clearer and Thor was almost agonizingly struck by its beauty. It was a clear androgynous voice, hauntingly sweet, sad and hopeful all at once. It was the voice of someone who knew how to fill this entire theatre and keep the audience always coming back. It was a voice he wanted to take in his arms and keep close and safe. But he could do that no more than he could a shadow. He knew, without hearing the words that the singer had performed here and that something unspeakable had happened here. He did not want to know what and he had to find out.

I want to help. He wanted to say it out loud to the shadows – to the shadow, the one he was coming more and more to think of as his. But as soon as he thought it the voice went quiet, trailing out on a high note that sounded like one of pleasure and thanks. Whatever has happened here, I want to make it right.

He thought he heard a sigh, like the whisper of a curtain, felt against his cheek one of those curious ghostly kisses he was almost coming to crave and then he was alone again.

When Thor came out of the theatre, blinking into the light of outside, there was a car parked there in front of the main door. The car, Thor remembered. The window was rolled down and Heimdall was leaning just inside. The man beckoned him over as calmly as though Thor had ordered the car to come round for him. Certainly, Thor could not but doubt that Heimdall had been waiting there exclusively for him.

"Get in Odinson," Heimdall nodded, and Thor did.

_x_

Oooh where they going? :-) Anyways in the next chapter Heimdall gonna finally tell Thor some things. Things about what a certain little ghost got up to when it was alive.

:-)