Billy. Going where darkness fears to tread… - Colin David Palmer

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to throttle her. She popped a thermometer in his mouth just as she paused enough in her prattle for him to get in the burning question.

      “Rot rer rer it?”

      She’d have made a beaut dentist as she actually understood what he said. “They told us you might ask that you know!”

      Billy rolled his eyes at her. He wondered if they told her how to answer it as well. He removed the thermometer from his mouth. “What, year, is, it?” enunciating each word so she would hopefully comprehend that an immediate answer was required.

      She stood still looking at him, no discernible concern registering on her face that she felt insulted or anything. Her response ignored his question entirely. “You put that back in your mouth right now,” she scolded.

      Billy was beginning to get a mite upset but somehow kept his anger in check. You could just kill her you know? He had always been a patient person and very little upset him. Composed. That’s how one of his teachers described him. But if the cops had been right, and recalling his appearance he did not doubt it, he understood that somehow, he had not been away only four months, but four years and four months.

      His recollection of the last four months was as plain as day, sitting out on that patio with the old man watching the boats go by. He had no one to ask where he’d been for four years, and he doubted anybody else would know, except he knew he should. Billy strained, concentrated, but could not recall anything. He clearly remembered walking out of home the morning after his Dad and Mum had been taken away. He recalled moving on. He could see each and every day since, as they had all been almost exactly the same. There had been no break, no breach at all. Where had the other four years gone? He put the thermometer back in my mouth.

      “Rot rear ris it?”

      “Why, it’s nineteen eighty-four!” she replied brightly, as if he was stupid or something.

      So it was fact – he had lost four years of his life. He lay back on the pillow so confused that he couldn’t work out if he was twenty already, or turning twenty in another few months. Little in Life frightened him but this came close. He warmed to some memories, of Mum and Dad, home, Tony, school, but mostly, mostly of Jen. Oh fuck, more of this bleedin’ heart crap. And he dreamed of seeing her again after what was supposed to have been short sabbatical, and what their reunion would be like. It will certainly be different now. The warden spoke again and interrupted his thoughts.

      “I said, you’re probably famished. I’ll get something sent up to you, okay?” Billy looked at her and nodded. “Let me give you a hint young man. This is a public hospital, and the Staff does not have time to mess around with people who think they are something special. The nerve, running away the way you did! Any wonder your poor mother passed away like that!”

      She walked away, leaving Billy staring open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the vacant doorway. Told you to kill her. Mum gone too. It was getting a little clearer now, slowly, as the story unfolded and he managed to put the pieces together. Nobody had really asked him where he’d been yet, except the cops. They must simply assume that he’d hid somewhere for four years. The probable reality was that nobody knew, nobody, but Billy should have. Perhaps the guys on the other side had some idea. He moved on and went home.

      Chapter Nine

      “Transits, Home, Jen, and Tony”

      Moving On Billy called it. The term described shifting between the parallels or from one location to another within the same parallel. People, normal people have this conception that ghosts, spirits, whatever you want to call them, can appear wherever they want to. Well, whatever you think they are, they can do that. But there are limitations. They can’t decide that Tahiti looks good and just go there! They must have some history at the location first, in Life, then they can return whenever they want, if they want. Hence the commonly known ‘haunted house’ scenario. Most of them did exactly that for the first couple of years, (return that is, not haunt, a debateable difference) until things change so much that it begins to hurt. Survivors in Life, the widow, the widower, the girlfriend, boyfriend, whoever, always found someone else eventually. These transitory beings, transits, would usually give up after that, and after days, months or even years would finally pass on to wherever.

      The Transits were the ones Billy saw moving into and out of Life as they checked up on their Reality. As soon as that was gone, so were they. Which helps explain why Billy was always so composed at such a young age. He needed to keep his feet on the ground, metaphorically speaking, but what he knew, what he alone saw and experienced granted a boy maturity beyond anything Life could give. He opened his front gate and walked slowly toward the front door, the front fence, garden and the outside of the house had been completely refurbished. He looked around in wonder.

      “Who is it?” was the response to his tentative knock.

      Billy didn’t recognise the voice and moved on into the house so he could see. The inside had also changed considerably. New paint, furniture, his Dad’s chair and TV were gone. His room was now a nursery; colourful mobiles hung from the ceiling and gaily painted animals and letters of the alphabet splashed over the walls. He returned and stood beside the woman as she opened the front door, and was greeted by nobody, of course. She peered around, up and down the street and then closed the door.

      “Damn kids!” she muttered.

      She walked back to the renovated kitchen where Billy had interrupted her cake making. He watched as she hummed to herself and resumed beating the mixture. It felt comfortable and Billy thought he might stay awhile but then shook his head.

      “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he admonished.

      The woman stopped beating and frowned. She looked around the kitchen, shook her head herself, and continued beating again. Her humming was softer, more restrained.

      Billy looked around the house one more time then went to Tonys’ place. There was no mistaking that Tony still lived there. His room had not changed but his drum kit was bigger and more expensive, as was his sound equipment. Billy sat down at the messy desk and wrote a note, then took a deep breath for his next visit. This was going to be the difficult one. He went to Jens’.

      He sat on her bed and looked around the room. Very little had changed but enough to know Jen wasn’t there anymore. Her photos were still there on the wall and the mirror of her dresser, exactly as he remembered them. He saw one of them together at the tennis courts as well. She was so beautiful. He quietly opened a few drawers of her dresser. They were empty. Her wardrobe was empty. Everything was completely empty. The room was like a shell, a facade. It didn’t feel like she had just moved out of home or anything simple like that. Billy thought that she would have taken the photos, and her parents wouldn’t have left her room looking like a mausoleum. Something felt wrong, even smelt wrong. He took one of the smaller photos from the mirror.

      He could smell that cake cooking back at home, his old home, and remembered how hungry he was. His note for Tony, if he got it in time, would see them catch up before the weekend was out. Billy went to his other favourite place, the tennis courts, or more precisely, the clubhouse.

      It wasn’t small anymore. It had more than doubled in size, and there was six courts now all green concrete with permanent painted lines. A lingering aroma of food remained and Billy assumed that he’d just missed the ladies morning comp. The smell reminded him again of his hunger. That’s the trouble with Life, you have to maintain it or die, or at the very least suffer in some way. There was a fridge and a freezer and a proper kitchen in there no less so he helped myself as well as he could. A frozen steak out of the freezer was soon sizzling on a hot plate. Some left over salad from the fridge went straight into his mouth. He ate the steak half raw and still part frozen in the centre, slapped between two slices of bread warmed over the cooking steak. The juices ran through the bread and made it fall apart

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