Out of time part 4
They’d left the waiting room (as Annie had insisted on calling it) with little difficulty. After all, she said, they didn’t generally guard this part with much enthusiasm. Once people were in they stayed obediently, waiting for whatever happened next, though she’d no idea what that actually was. She’d wanted to get George out of there as quickly as possible in case he regressed into what she referred to as the ‘after-state’, which was what he’d been in when she found him. It was that happy state of oblivion that kept everyone quiet and contented without any understanding or realization of why.
Communism could learn a lot from the afterlife, she’d told him on the way out.
George couldn’t disagree.
But she hadn’t led him back to the room with the queue. Too many eyes, she said. Instead, she’d taken him to some quiet place where there were no other people and actually, nothing else at all. It was all just white and featureless, like a Beyonce video.
There she’d tried to locate Mitchell while George fidgeted nervously.
“Would you hurry up!” he’d hissed at her as she took what he considered to be an age.
“Oh really?” she’d shot back. “Do you want to try sending your mind on a search of the astral plane?”
“Yes, if you’d show me how.”
“It’s very difficult,” she said primly.
“Well, have you found him yet?”
Annie sniffed. “No.”
“Have you searched hell, or whatever it’s called?”
“No!” she stated angrily.
“Then do that!”
“I can’t,” she said. “Not from here. I think we’re going to need to go there.”
That shut him up and his eyes went wide at the very thought.
She almost laughed at him. “It’s not like it is in the old films, George. There’s no devil was a pitch fork.”
“How do you know,” he said, swallowing. “I thought you’d never been.”
“Well I haven’t I’m just…”
“Guessing?”
“Yes. So are you coming?”
“How?”
“Teleport. You’re a ghost here so you can do it too.”
“Really?” his face perked up a bit at that. It was the one thing that Annie could do he’d always been a little jealous of, zooming around wherever she wanted without all that fuss of public transport or using her legs or anything.
“Here.” She took his hand. “On three. One, two…”
The place they’d landed was unbelievably dark compared to the place they’d just come from, and the difference was so profound that it took both of them a good while to get their ghostly senses to adjust. Then Annie started looking again, while George got even more nervous. He felt wrong, incredibly wrong, and spidery sensations were working their way up and down his spine. There was a creeping horror here, something unspeakable and unknowable and coming for them out of the darkness…
“He’s here!” she said triumphantly, and he’d almost grabbed her with fright.
“Oh thank God!”
She’d taken his hand again, and they’d transported themselves to the spot she’d zeroed in on, her skills landing them mere inches from their target.
“Annie!” Mitchell was hugging her barely before she’d realized he was there. “Oh my god, it’s really you!”
“Mitchell!” Joy streamed through her tangibly and she hugged him tightly. Then she pushed him back, and looked intently into his eyes. “Is it you?” she demanded. “Is it the real you?”
Mitchell knew what she was asking, remembered with a pang the last time they had met, when, drunk on blood, he’d said things; things he regretted.
He nodded. “It’s me,” he whispered, taking both her hands in his. “Annie it’s really me.”
George stood awkwardly to the side of them, not wanting to interrupt their moment.
Then he caught sight of Lucy.
She smiled at him uncomfortably, and his eyes opened wide. “You!” he hissed. “What the hell are you doing here - though I suppose I’ve really just answered my own question haven’t I?”
Mitchell heard him drew back from Annie. He gave George a slap on the shoulder in welcome. “Good to see you,” he said, smiling.
George wasn’t smiling. “Mitchell what are you doing here - with her?” George indicated Lucy with a stabbing movement, while the woman in question shrank back.
Mitchell shrugged. “I was sent here,” he said obscurely. “Anyway, how did you two find each other?”
“Oh I just knew he was here and found him,” Annie explained in an equally throwaway manner. “I can’t believe you both came for me. How did you manage it? How did you get through without a door?”
“Well, George…” Mitchell started, but George interrupted him.
“Mitchell,” he said purposefully. “Shouldn’t we be getting back now? We can explain it all later.”
Mitchell looked at him, surprised at his tone. But then he saw his face. “Uh yeah,” he said. “Sure. Let’s get back. Only…” he glanced round at Lucy, then back at his friends. “Can I talk to you two for a second?” He led them to one side, and they followed, curious. “Okay,” Mitchell said. “Here’s the thing. I want to take Lucy back with us.”
“What?” George all but shrieked. “You can’t be serious, Mitchell, after what she’s done!”
“Why? What has she done?” Annie asked, confused.
The boys turned to her incredulous. Then it struck them that Annie didn’t actually know what had happened at the facility. As far as she knew, it was Kemp who was the evil mastermind of everything. It was him, after all, who had killed in front of her. It was him who had sent her screaming through the door into the darkness. She must have had some awareness of things as she’d managed to track them down at their new cottage and use Lucy’s door to come through to their plane and return Kemp the favour, dragging him straight to hell. But the finer details had probably been lost on her.
“She killed people,” George explained quickly. “Werewolves. She killed Tully and she was going to kill me and Nina as well. She had everyone convinced it was a cure, but it wasn’t. It was never going to work. They’d tried it on lots of people before us but it had never worked. They knew we were going to die. That’s why she’s here, Annie. She’s a murderer.”
“Yes, but so am I!” Mitchell broke in. “And just in case it’s escaped your attention, so are you, George. And even you Annie,” he included her, a little unkindly he even admitted to himself. “We’ve all killed when it’s suited us, and yes, we’ve had good reason, but she had a conviction to what she was doing as well. It was wrong, and she’s been judged and stuck here for all eternity, but that doesn’t mean we should leave her. Where’s your compassion?”
George’s face hardened. “I left it locked in a decompression chamber in Bristol,” he said.
Annie was trying to process all the information she’d just received, and do it quickly. “So she was all part of it then, her and Kemp. Everything that was going on at the facility?”
“Yeah,” George said.
“Yes she was,” Mitchell confirmed. “But I’m the one she betrayed more than any of us, and I’m willing to forgive her.”
“Oh Mitchell, you’re just feeling sorry for her,” George protested. “I know you were in love with her, but she’s dead, she being punished for how she lived her life. Who are we to interfere with that?”
“Well, we’re taking Annie back, aren’t we?”
There was a small, awkward silence.
Mitchell sighed and tried one last argument. “Look. We might not even be able to get her out of here. But we’ve all been given a second chance before. Why not her? Surely we can find it in ourselves to give her one last chance.”
George shook his head slightly. “Okay,” he said. “But if she…” he started to say, but then he gasped and staggered backwards slightly, folding over a little as if the non-existent air had just been forced out of this body.
Annie instinctively reached a hand out to him for support. “What’s wrong?” she cried.
George stood there with a scared expression on his face, then he looked up at Mitchell. “We have to go,” he stated. “Right now.”
Mitchell nodded, understanding right away what was happening. “And Lucy?”
“Bring her,” Annie said, slipping an arm round George to support him. “I’ll show you the way out.”
---
They hurried back along the corridor Mitchell had taken to get to the grey room, leaving behind the helpless souls scratching the walls in search of their gods and their beliefs. Annie cried as they went, knowing that the memory of what they’d seen would stay with her for eternity, but she didn’t let it confuse her purpose.
“John Mitchell. Back again?”
“Uh, yeah, just on my way out now. Thanks again.” He pushed them all along.
“Wait a second. I didn’t say you were plus one, or three! You can’t leave!”
“Watch us,” Annie said firmly, and they pushed their way out to another space, another empty space just like the one she and George had been in before, dark and formless. And the music was back.
“Oh Christ,” Mitchell groaned. “Okay, where now?”
“Well, we take the lift,” Annie stated as though it was the most normal thing in the world.
“You’re shitting me,” Mitchell said incredulously. “There’s actually a lift out of hell?”
“Well it’s not a real lift,” Annie said, as a door appeared in front of them and opened with a ding. “Think of it as metaphorical.”
“I never do anything else,” he muttered as they hustled inside. But Lucy didn’t join them. “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand.
She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t deserve it. I belong here. I deserve to be punished.”
“Well we’ll find another way to punish you. Come on,” Mitchell demanded.
She shook her head again. “I’m sorry.”
George gasped again, and tumbled backwards into the wall of the lift. Annie caught him, looking scared now.
“George, what the hell’s going on?” she demanded. When he didn’t reply, she looked at the vampire instead. “Mitchell? What’s happening to him?”
Mitchell glanced at George, who had his eyes shut, his face creased in concentration. “It’s our way home,” he said quickly, then turned back to Lucy who was still standing outside the lift. “Lucy, now!” he demanded, in a voice that couldn’t be ignored.
She glanced behind her, undecided and scared and more confused that she could ever remember being. She was dead and she was where she was supposed to be. But here was a way out. Not easy or straightforward as death had seductively appeared to be. It was a chance to fight back, perhaps, to not accept the inevitable.
To do something amazing.
She closed her eyes and reached out her hand to him.
Mitchell dragged her inside just as the doors were closing, and they stood there, the four of them, while slowly the metaphorical lift began to carry them upwards.
And there was music.
It seemed to take an age, or maybe it was no time at all, and then the door slid open and disgorged them into another white space. They looked about them.
“Okay,” said Annie decisively. “This is as far as we can go.” She looked between Mitchell and George. “Whatever the two of you are planning, you better do it now.”
George gasped again and staggered, Mitchell reaching out to grab him and stop him falling. But the moment he made contact he felt the oddest sensation, as though he were being pulled and stretched, and he saw the room fade just a little, like a lightbulb going on and off.
Shit.
“Everyone hold on to George!” he shouted commandingly.
“What?” Annie looked confused.
“Just do it!”
They did as he said and they were gone.
Then there was light. And a corridor. And the men.
Annie had been right. The men just weren’t going to let them go. In the world of the living they had no power to do anything. They couldn’t drag people through, couldn’t kill them. They could have no other impact than to prey on the minds of those who were already weak and vulnerable. But here, in this realm, in the afterlife, they were as gods.
They’d watched this unlikely band of escapees making their way, laughing at their fears and arguments and pointless human attempts to get back to where they thought they came from. They could have stepped in at any point, of course to tie them up in terror and stop their every living thought. But what was the point? Better to wait until they had them together. Better to let them come to them.
Yes so they had a door sitting half open, and very clever that had been too. Very clever. Whoever had made up the rules all that time ago hadn’t figured on the humans advancing their medicine so far as to actually bring people back who by all rights should have passed through the door and damn well stayed there. But it didn’t matter. The men still had a say. And door or no door, in their realm, no one was going anywhere unless they said so.
But they’d forgotten one thing.
They’d forgotten about Annie.
“No.”
They’d forgotten that she had her own power over the doors and over death.
“No.”
They’d forgotten how she’d not gone like all the others into the state of mind numbness that prevented them from thinking or hoping or asking to go home.
“No.”
They’d forgotten that they feared her and that she had become something that they could no longer control.
“No!”
“Guys, I do wish you’d stop saying no to me. You know if just makes me angry.”
“You are not going through the door, little girl.”
“Oh really? You want to bet your sticks on that?”
“We will bet anything you want. But you are staying here with us. We’ve got so much yet to show you. It wouldn’t be right to just let you go.”
“You know what, I am so sick of you telling me what I can and can’t do. You haven’t been able to do one thing to me so far, not here and not through there. You’ve been controlling me with fear, and I’m passed that. I’m not afraid of you, because you can’t do anything to me. You don’t know what I am.”
“You are nothing.”
“Yeah? Well how come my friends have come all this way just to get me back? If I’m nothing, explain that? You can’t can you, because for all you sit there watching mankind, you don’t now anything about us. You can’t understand love or sacrifice or friendship. You can’t understand what binds people together and makes them walk hand in hand through fire and death to find each other. And I pity you for that.”
“What?”
“I pity you.”
Silence.
“Now get the hell out of our way!”
---
The door bust open into a very small, cramped bathroom, and four figures tumbled through one after the other, all tripping over each other and ending up pretty much in a heap over the toilet.
“Where - the fuck - have you been!!”
The furious and breathless voice belonged to Nina who was on the floor by the door giving her boyfriend chest compressions. Sweat was mixing with her tears and dripping off her red face. Mitchell resisted the urge to stand up dramatically and announce that they’d been to hell and back. Instead, he untangled himself from the pile and hurried over.
“How long?” he asked.
She leaned down to breathe into George’s mouth, then sprang back into action, pounding on his chest. “12 minutes,” she said, sounding exhausted. “No response.”
Over by the toilet, the other three straightened themselves up. Annie looked over with horror as the dawning realization of how her friends had come into the other world to find her hit home.
“What did you do?” she muttered. She turned to George, who was looking slightly sheepish, and slapped him. “How could you do that!” she exclaimed.
“Ow!” he protested. “I’m the one dying over there, and you’re hitting me!”
Mitchell saw Nina’s pained expression as she disappeared down in front of him to do more mouth to mouth, and he looked up angrily. “George, you’re not helping!”
“Have you tried shocking him,” Lucy suggested, her doctor instincts kicking in despite the fact that she had just been ripped out of hell.
Nina looked up in shock at her voice, almost distracted enough to stop what she was doing. “What - the hell is she - doing here?” she panted out angrily, glaring at Mitchell.
“It’s a - long story,” he said, turning away from her and grabbing the defibrillator panels that were lying on the floor. “How do I get this thing to work?” he asked, holding them up.
“You don’t,” Nina snapped. “Three charges and - the battery died. The thing is fucked!”
“Shit,” Mitchell intoned, looking down at the useless piece of machinery in his hands. “Should we call an ambulance?”
Nina shook her head. “No time,” she said. “He’s been down too long.” She looked him in the eye, ignoring the others in the room. “If we can’t get him back here and soon,” she said quietly. “Then we’ve lost him.”
“What about adrenalin?” Lucy piped up again, she’d moved closer, feeling drawn to the medical action.
“Every few minutes,” Nina said, without looking at her.
“Atropine?” she wondered.
This time Nina rewarded her with a full glare. “How many fucking hands to you think I have!” she snapped.
“I’ll do it,” Mitchell said, reaching round for the box of medical supplies behind them and finding the appropriate vial and a syringe.
“Why did you do it?” Annie was asking George. The two ghosts were aloof from the action, feeling separate. Fresh tears were streaking Annie’s face.
George shrugged. “We couldn’t think of any other was to get you back,” he said quietly. “It was all we could think about, Mitchell and me.” He was watching the action by the door dispassionately, as though it were a TV programme rather than reality. “I had nightmares where I would see you dragged through that door over and over again. Mitchell - I don’t think he slept pretty much from the time you went. He’s been so broken, Annie.”
“But it’s too much,” she sobbed out. “This is too much. It’s too much of a sacrifice.”
“It was worth it,” George nodded, smiling slightly. “Because you’re here.”
She linked arms with him and put her head on his shoulder.
“Okay, you need to hit him,” Lucy told Nina.
“What?”
“Hard, mid-sternum - aim carefully. Without the defribulator, it’s the only thing that might shock his heart back into a survivable rhythm”
“Hit him?” Mitchell said incredulously.
Nina closed her eyes, knowing she was right and acted quickly, taking her hands off his chest and bringing her fist down hard. Smack!
“Again,” Lucy said, “Hit him again!”
Nina was crying openly now, barely able to see through her tears, her arms burning with exhaustion and tension and fear. Smack!
“Again!”
Smack!
Beside her, Annie felt George gasp suddenly, very much as he had done when they were on the other side. She turned to him quickly, searching his face. “Are you…?”
Mitchell looked over at them, and Annie met his gaze, the air of tension in the room fit to bursting point.
“Again!” Lucy shouted.
Sobbing, Nina smacked her lover one last time. And with an odd popping sound, Annie realized that she was holding nothing beside her. The ghost George had disappeared.
George gasped.
“Oh my god!” Mitchell exclaimed, having genuinely believed him to be dead and gone, and for the ghost quota to have gone up in the house by not one but two.
George began to cough, huge gasping choking coughs that were his body’s attempt to clear water from his lungs. Nina moved quickly and found him oxygen amongst their medical supplies.
“Well, at least that works,” Mitchell muttered, getting up and moving away, as Nina broke down finally, and clung to George’s hand, sobbing piteously as she encouraged him to breathe.
Mitchell remembered Annie, and he turned to see her still in tears and alone by the toilet. He went straight to her, enfolding her in his arms and telling her that everything was going to be alright.