A Ghost Story by Jade Ashcroft

The resonance of the wind chimes drifted in through the open windows as the summer breeze gently nudged the lace panels from their resting place, breathing rhythmically albeit silently in unison with the metallic tones. Laughter and raised voices could be heard spilling down through the trapdoor which led to the attic room.

Sunlight beamed through the windows, illuminating the spiral clouds of dust particles that had dispersed from underneath the cardboard box which the small boy had just dropped on the floor. He proceeded to go into a fit of coughing and spluttering as a result of the dust cloud and his sister shouted at him from the other side of the room,

“Damn it David, you have to be careful and try not to drop things. There’s expensive stuff in these boxes and mom will kill us if she knows we have been up here.”

David sat down hard with his lip protruding, sulking,
“Okay Patty”, he whined.

“Why does she have to treat me like a baby all the time “, he thought to himself,
“I’m almost ten”

His sister laughed, tugging Carla’s sleeve to get her attention, pointing at her lip and then behind her while rolling her eyes in mockery at her younger brother.

“And you can stop sulking, just because you are behind those boxes doesn’t mean I can’t see you!”

Carla unearthed a fluffy white feather boa and instinctively tied it around her neck and with her other hand she held up a pair of beautiful diamond earrings, which shone mottled prisms of light on her face. She sighed as she showed them to Patty.
.
“What do you think we would have been like if we had been born then?”

“What you mean if we were all ….like… girlified!!” said Patty, as she pulled a handful of hair up on top of her head and pouted,
“Oh yes, and I shall be going to the ball just like Cinderella”

“Aaaw, sweet.” they both exclaimed, simultaneously.

David was trying his hardest to ignore them and pay full attention to his new spoil. He lifted out a small, dark blue gift box and inside of which there sparkled what he thought was a necklace. It was a long silver chain right enough, but it had a large emerald point attached to one end of the silver chain that would have easily been mistaken for being a quartz point. The embossed lettering on the inside lid of the box, David hadn’t noticed at all, as he was completely entranced by the glittering emerald. His thoughts were perfectly still and silent.

“David”, a soft feminine voice whispered to him, right beside his ear.

“Yeah, I know….put it back before I break it” he mumbled to his sister, “I am only looking at it”

Carla and Patty turned their heads at the same time but without both of them standing up there was no chance of actually seeing what he was up to, so they carried on searching through their latest pile of treasure.

“Does he have imaginary friends or something?’ Carla enquired, on hearing David speaking to somebody.

Patty shrugged, “Not as far as I was aware”

David, however, hadn’t noticed that nobody had physically spoken to him. He had naturally assumed that it was his sister talking to him and was listening as intently as if he was awaiting the finale of a bedtime story.

“A seer you will be, and this gift is for you”, the voice whispered to him, “Bringing your future to you, faster than you could ever imagine.”

“Really”, David whispered. His eyes were gleaming, transfixed on the gem while he carefully lowered it back into the box, “A gift for me”

“Take it with you now”, said the voice, as it echoed away into the dust and boxes.

He carefully placed the box into the long pocket of his army trousers, buttoning it quickly and returning his attention the contents of the box in front of him.

“Oh my god” Patty cried out, “Is that really the time? Mom’s going to be home any minute, quick help me put these boxes back where they came from!”

The two girls bundled the remnants together and lifted them up from the floor, stuffing them into their appropriate boxes.

“We’ll be in deep shit if she finds us up here…” Patty fretted, then figuring her brother could easily be the time stopper she called over to him, “David put that box away……”
David looked up at her with confusion.

“That box. In front of your feet” she said, “and let’s go downstairs, right now.”

“You’re weird” David grunted at her, “One minute you’re nice to me and then you just ….”

“I’m your sister”, Patty cut him off, “it’s my prerogative to be weird, but right now we just have to get downstairs ok baby Davy.”

David picked up the box from the floor and pushed it to the back of the shelf.
“Ok and I am not a baby” he groaned.

“Yeah, sure you’re not”, Patty grabbed him by the shoulders and marched him to the ladders.
“Carla will go first, then you. I’ll lock the trapdoor once we’re down. Carla?”

She climbed down hastily and shouted back up towards the hole,
“Come on Davy”

David turned around and took his first step onto the ladder. He could hear an eerie noise, coming from downstairs which broke the quiet stature of the house.

“Step two, step three…” He whispered to himself, “don’t look down. “

Outside the window, an unseen presence ensued rubbing the wind chimes together, spinning them around each other to produce a resonant hum. What started out quietly, rapidly built in intensity. Carla turned her head, attempting to discern the location of the noise and in that split second as David put out his foot to take another step down, the noise forced him to lose his balance and his foot slipped from the ladder.

At that moment his time perception altered from real time into slow motion, upon realising that he had no control over his body whatsoever, his grip on the ladder loosened and the noise engulfed the space around him. He calmly watched himself falling, from outside of his body, and that moment seemed to last forever. He heard voices in the screaming of the wind chimes, calling his name, and felt himself unconsciously being pulled towards them.

“He’s falling!” Patty yelled to Carla, but it was too late.

David’s body hit the floor with a sickening thud. Motionless, his small frame lay crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the step ladders. The silence in the house was overwhelming as the noise ceased just as suddenly as it had begun.

Carla dropped to her knees, in shock, whimpering, “David…Are you alright?”

David had floated outside, drawn by the sound of the wind chimes and was watching in amazement as the space in front of him took on the substance of a bubbling oil slick, swirling in a spiral motion.

Patty rushed down the ladders as quickly as she could, without having an accident herself and knelt down beside David.
“Oh my god, he’s out cold” she said, as she put two fingers on his neck to check his pulse. She could feel a faint heartbeat.
“Can you hear me? Davy?”
Patty whimpered and her shoulders shook as she began sobbing uncontrollably.
Carla fell to her knees beside Patty and David.
“Do you think we should call an ambulance?” Carla whispered.

David felt himself being pulled into the middle of the rippling spiral, and the motion of passing through the portal dispersed his sense of reason and he was pulled away from everything he had known and loved.

“Do you think he’s hurt himself badly?” asked Carla, terrified “I’m so sorry David, it’s my fault. I wasn’t looking”

“David can you hear me” shouted Patty. She was trembling with panic and feared for her brother’s wellbeing.
Neither of them had heard Patty’s mother coming in the front door.
“Anybody home”, she shouted up the stairs.

The two girls froze, instantaneously.
They looked at each other in desperation.
“What are we going to do?” Carla asked.

Patty was distraught, with tears welling up in her eyes, as the seriousness of the situation was sinking in fast. She coughed, clearing her throat, and shouted down to her mom.
“We’re up here, and you’d better come quick David’s had an accident.”

David felt his consciousness slipping away from him as barrage of mental pictures streamed towards him. Some of the people he recognised, he had met them in his house. He saw his days at school with his friends, fluttering by, days by seconds.
He saw himself running by the river, from a vantage point up in the clouds, laughing and chasing Prince, the scruffy mongrel whom his mom had rescued from the animal refuge. He watched himself falling from the stepladders and his sister rushing to his assistance, leaning over him and crying. He watched his mom picking him up and carrying him to the car, all the while shouting at Patty, with tears streaming down her face. He couldn’t hear what they were saying.
The last picture, that seemed to linger much longer than all of the rest, was that of his family gathered around him as he lay motionless on a hospital bed, attached to machines that monitored his heart rate and his brain functions.

“I’m dying”, he thought to himself.

He felt upset but he couldn’t cry because his body was way down there on that bed and he didn’t seem to have any control over it whatsoever. His family seemed to be slipping further and further away from him. Around the edges of his vision a cloud of blackness was eating away at the image.
He realized then that it was not them who were slipping away, it was him.

He felt as though he was being sucked through an enormous cave, but at the same time it felt as if he was falling really fast. There was a roar that confused him because he had never heard a sound like it before. It could have been thousands of tiny wings beating, or the sound you hear when you put a seashell against your ear, only it a million times louder. But there were sounds he didn’t recognise that mingled with the overbearing roar.

After a while the sound softened, as it altered its vibration rate to that of a high pitched whine, with intermittent gaps in it. David’s attention was completely captured by this noise and he momentarily forgot about the existence of everything. The only thing he perceived was the sound.

Unknown to him, he had travelled far away from the sphere of his origin and had been temporarily entrusted into the care of the Auraeliah. The Auraeliah are light beings. They are pure information and knowledge whose function id the assistance of mankind. They resonate with all the colours of the light spectrum and they appear to humans in the realm of thought; pure consciousness, sometimes as a fine mist or a simple humanoid shape amid a hue of swirling colours.
They communicate with each other through a high frequency array of musical tones, and this was what David was hearing.

They have a compassionate connection to the human race, and are completely benign, unlike that of the lower energy forms which attach themselves to the less desirable traits of humans and rear their heads as the proverbial demons.
Through his innocence, David had not been tainted by any of this and the Auraeliah were communicating with each other concerning the destiny of this childlike entity of which they must care for.

As the Auraeliah recapitulate, that it takes millions of years for a human soul to reach the maturity of an ascended being, and David’s had not had anywhere near the life experience of those who ascended from the third dimension, they agree he must be trained.

It was pre-destined that David was to become a pioneer in omnipresent dimensional contact; to mediate between human consciousness and the messages of the energy beings, and to teach humans how to do this for themselves. But this meant that he would have to learn the universal laws, and they cannot be taught over night.
The child David wouldn’t remember much of his training but it would be there with him when he returned to his home, and attainable through the means of meditation and ritual magic. He must be prepared for his transition.

The high pitched whine subsided to a dull hissing sound and David became aware that he was no longer moving anywhere; he was just suspended in space. He was wondering about the noise that he had just heard. He had started to feel that it was familiar right about the moment when it faded away. He wondered how long he had been here, it seemed like forever but he just couldn’t tell. Something flickered in and out of the space he occupied, temporarily lighting up a portion of the darkness and then disappeared again just as quickly.

His thoughts strayed towards his mom. He missed her and he was confused. Not that he was lonely, he felt something near him that seemed recognizable and comforting, but he knew his mom would be worried about him and he didn’t know how to get back home. The darkness around him glowed with a golden hue and the flickering lights transformed into shivering blue flames, glowing like candles, darting quickly back and forth.

A soft female voice resonated around him, “You’re safe here with us David. We will explain why you are here, but at the moment you are a little too young to understand.”

“Can I go home to my mom.” Asked David

The voice attempted to reassure him, “Not now, you are here because you needed to be. For you to fulfil your destiny, you must be shielded to retain your innocence. This will be hard for you to understand but you will, in time.”

“Do I have to stay in the dark? I don’t like the dark, it scares me. Why can’t I see anything?” his voice trailed off into the darkness.

“It is always dark in the beginning, child. Your journey will bring you illumination. You must forget your earthly ties for quite sometime and learn. All that you experience here will assist you when you return to your life. But you must sleep now and dream your way into your future”

The blue flames gathered together, spiralling around the space David’s presence was occupying, creating a passage for his journey into information.
They spun faster and faster as a shimmering spiral tunnel was created and his essence was rapidly sucked through it. His awareness seemed to split and he could feel himself travelling though tunnels, moving in numerous directions at the same time. He also felt himself falling like a leaf on a windless day; swinging from side to side gently floating down and down, until he perceived nothing any more.

Ten years later.

Sylvia, David’s mom, had refused any attempt suggested that her son was lost to her, even though ten years had transpired since he had fallen into a coma, she still held firmly to the belief that he was merely sleeping. If his accident had occurred a hundred years earlier he would have been long dead. But with the ongoing saga of euthanasia, and the determination of mankind to prolong the length of human life, no matter what the cost, ensured the best care for her son that Sylvia had been able to afford.

His body functions were as normal as could be expected, considering his condition, and his brain activity repeatedly registered on the EEG as highly active. She spent most evenings reading stories to him. Through the looking glass had been her favourite when she was a child and even though she had read it to him a dozen times already, she still read it with as much enthusiasm as if it was the first time.

Sylvia’s husband had left her three years ago saying that he couldn’t cope with the way she was acting, and told her that she would break down eventually and didn’t think he would be able to help her deal with the loss. If the truth be known he had felt useless being there, and invisible most of the time as all she could talk about was what they would do when her son recovered. Everybody else had come to terms with it so why couldn’t she. It was just plain stupid to think that David was going to come out of this in any kind of comprehensible state.

Sylvia was half asleep, dozing, with the book open in her lap.
She stretched her arms out in front of her, stifling a yawn.
“I’m sorry honey, did I fall asleep? What kind of a narrator phases out halfway through a chapter, huh? Guess I’m just a little tired and the noise from these machines doesn’t seem to help.”

The staff nurse popped her head around the door and whispered,
“Sorry to disturb you dear but there’s a phone call from a young lady that I think you might want to take”

“Who is it?” Sylvia enquired, puzzled as to who could be calling her at the hospital at this time of night.

“She didn’t give me her name” the staff nurse replied, “Just made a huge fuss about wanting to talk to you right away. Say’s she’s been trying to find you for months”

The nurse shrugged her shoulders, “I told her you were kind of busy but she wouldn’t take no for an answer!”

Sylvia paused for a second, about to give the nurse instructions to tell the girl to stop wasting her time, when she felt a pang of nerves in her solar plexus. An instinctive feeling hit her that second, that this could be important.
She got up out of the chair, putting down the book and said,
“I’ll be right there.”
She leaned over her son’s bed and gently brushed his forehead with the tips of her fingers.
“You always look so peaceful Davy, I sometimes wonder what you would make of this world anyway”, she sighed, gently stroking his hair.

After the staff nurse bustled out of the room the door swung repeatedly, scratching the floor with the bristles on the bottom. Sylvia stared at it, hypnotically swinging.

David’s voice echoed beside her right ear, “I love you mom”
Startled, she jumped backwards; impulsively scanning the EEG spikes and watching a peak surge and then trail away back to its regular activity levels.

“David” She breathed, “Was that you?”

After a momentary heart stopping silence, the machines resumed their regular whirring and beeping.

Sylvia felt like she was a hundred miles away from anything, standing in that hospital room. Hope had never left her, but it got harder to fight off the negativity from others everyday. Why did everyone feel the need to convince her that he was not going to make it?

“You’ll find it much easier to get on with your life if you just let him go, you know he wouldn’t have wanted this and he’ll never fully recover.”

How many times had she heard that, a million maybe? But they were all wrong. She was his mom and she wouldn’t give up on him just because she was being told to. Miracles happen all the time so why shouldn’t they happen in her family?

The staff nurse backed her way into the room tugging a phone extension along behind her,
“Okay miss, I understand, you told me that already, I’m with her now…..if you just give me a second until I hand over the phone.”

Red faced, rolling her eyes, she stretched her arm out and handed the phone to Sylvia.
“Here you go, she asked me to bring the phone to the room!” she said as she exhaled noisily

“Oh, ok” replied Sylvia, taking the phone from her, “Thanks”

“No problem, just bring it back to the reception desk when you have finished.”, the nurse nodded at Sylvia in a stern fashion, just so that she knew it wasn’t policy for phones to be dragged into rooms on a whim.

As soon as she put the phone to her ear she could sense extreme agitation in the young woman’s voice.
“Hello, Sylvia, Sylvia Price….Is that you?” she stammered

“Yes that’s me” Replied Sylvia, feeling totally flushed and nervous.

“Thank goodness I have found you at last. “, she replied, “My name is Melina, Melina Watts. I don’t know quite how to say this without freaking you out, but I know your son.”

Sylvia tensed her shoulders and she rubbed at her forehead hard with her hand, then wiped nervously at her eyes.
“What, you knew him at primary or something?” she said, figuring that this was probably just some kind of publicity seeking stunt, for an interview.

“No not at all, it’s a little more complicated than that. I, uh, started having conversations with David about two years ago. Well actually a better term for it might be communications. But anyway, at first I thought I was just getting a little confused with my pendulum but then I started checking up on some of the information that I was being given. “, Melina paused, tentatively, listening to the silence on the other end of the line.
“Mostly he talked about Patty and how he wished he could talk to her, to tell her that he didn’t blame her for his accident. Which is the kind of thing disembodied spirits do when they have been through some kind of trauma, you know. They are bound by their strong emotions, to the earth plane.”

After a second or two, the ambient tension seemed to contract upon itself, and Melina spoke quickly, concerned that Sylvia might just hang up.
“Mrs Price, I know this must sound insane but please hear me out”

Sylvia was choking back a lump in her throat as she fought the fountain of tears that was about to erupt.
“Mhm,” she replied, nodding her head.

Melina took a deep breath, braced herself, and continued,

“Ok, I don’t know how much you know about the workings of human consciousness but there are capabilities that are out of reach of the understanding of most of the general population. I am what you would call a medium. I am in contact with forces that are part of everyday life; believe me, but most people lack the awareness of their latent abilities to be able to perceive messages that are being sent everyday, which is why people like me spend their lives relaying these messages. To cut a long story short your son thinks he is dead.”

Sylvia let out a choking noise as she fought desperately to keep her composure.
“He thinks he’s dead” she croaked.
Her ears started ringing and she felt dizzy, nauseous.

Melina carried on, “I did a bit of research after the first year of the communications, mainly because his voice was so strong and I couldn’t hear much else apart from the knowledge that he felt he must share because of its importance. He kept telling me that we were getting it wrong, the theories about when we die, that it was really a cold dark place and that people needed to know the reality of their delusions. It has taken me this long to track you down and when I realised that he was in hospital in a coma….I had to get in touch immediately.”

“Are you serious?” Sylvia asked, “You really talked to him, how?”

“Well, yes and no. At first he just spelled out his messages through my pendulum but with time I began to hear his voice clearly, in my head. He just delivered messages to me that he wanted me to pass on to people, especially you”

“Do you think you can help him regain consciousness?” Asked Sylvia, her hands were trembling badly and she reached out on impulse taking David’s hand in hers, gently caressing his knuckles with her thumb.

“I’ve never given up on him. He will come out of it eventually. They told me that if he ever did wake up that he might not be able to communicate, because of the long term damage to his brain.”

The EEG flickered and spiked irregular messages onto its screen.

Melina cautiously ventured her answer, “I don’t know how much help I will be, but if I can come to the hospital where the two of you are, fingers crossed, at the very least he might be able to see me next to his body and realise that he is not dead.”

Sylvia coughed, trying to catch her breath and inhaling deeply before answering,
“I’d do anything that would bring David back to me, and for this nightmare to end, I miss him so much.”

“I’ll be there within the hour; I already travelled over your way to visit some friends. Will they be ok with me visiting after hours?” Melina enquired.

“I’m sure I’ll be able to sort something out. I’ll see you when you arrive”, replied Sylvia as she stood up, steadying herself with the bars on the side of the bed.

“See you then, bye”

Melina rang off and left Sylvia standing, with the phone still attached to her ear, staring at her son in disbelief.
“How could you think you were dead, honey.” she whispered, more to herself than to her son. “I have been here every day since your accident, why couldn’t I hear you. Why can’t you see me here….”

She let her arm drop by her side, still gripping the phone. Her eyes were brimming with tears and she shivered violently. All the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck prickled.
“Oh, Davy where have you been”

She shook herself in an attempt to clear her thoughts. She had never heard of anything like this before, but she definitely felt that it was something positive. He had been able to communicate, at least that was something? She turned around and put the phone back into its cradle.

The noise on the ward was minimal. A couple of nurses sat huddled around a small television set, behind the reception desk, having their coffee break. Sylvia coughed nervously, to catch the attention of one of the nurses.

“Thanks for this”, she said, sliding the phone across the desk towards them.

The nurse who had brought her the telephone enquired,
“So what was all the fuss about then?”

Sylvia reddened and tried to sound a little less agitated,
“Well, I’m not really sure that I understood exactly what she was saying but she might be able to do something for David.” She paused momentarily before asking,
“Will it be a problem if she comes to the hospital tonight; I mean I know its well after regular visiting hours but ….”

The nurse sighed, “As long as you don’t disturb the other patients, I don’t really see a problem.”
“Thank you so much” Sylvia replied, raising her hand fleetingly, “Enjoy your break”.
With that she turned and scurried back towards the room.

The nurse smiled sympathetically towards Sylvia, speaking in hushed tones to her work colleagues, “Poor soul, I wish something would happen either way with her son. It must be torture for her, being in limbo like that.”

The two nurses nodded their reply, having no words available for expression, just feeling for Sylvia and her suffering.

Sylvia flopped into the chair at her son’s bedside, exhausted. Her body felt heavy and as the seconds ticked by it became increasingly more difficult to keep her eyes open.
Giving in to the feelings of fatigue, she let herself begin to drift. Her awareness of the room was strong, but at the same time she slipped into a state of dreamy consciousness. She listened to the machines as they continued their monotonous drone. The hum seemed to grow in intensity, filling the space around her.
Her sense of placement shifted very slightly and her body seemed as though it was resonating, buzzing. A wave of fear climbed up her spine as the whole of her body proceeded to spasm with an electrical current tearing through her muscles.
She could hear rushing wind in her ears and though her body was still locked into a painful contraction, it felt like she was being pulled away from herself.

Moments later she became aware that she was looking down at herself sitting in the chair at her son’s bedside. The disorientation and painful seizure had passed and she was literally floating above herself. The displacement feeling wasn’t frightening her, just the fact that she was watching herself from outside of her body.

“Is this real or am I asleep?” She thought to herself, “I must be dreaming, that’s all, just a vivid dream “
David’s voice spoke inside her head, clearly but barely a whisper.
“Why can’t I come home, I miss you so much”
The voice trailed away, echoing like a softly spoken sentence resonating in a cavernous hall.

She jerked violently in the chair, gasping for breath. Sitting bolt upright with her eyes wide open. She tried to speak but it felt as if something had pressed itself against her chest and it hurt to breathe. Her breath was coming in gasps, her lungs trying to make up for the oxygen depletion; as a result of her breathing slowing down so much. She was trembling. Time seemed to have come to a standstill and the sound of the machines slowly crept back into perceptual awareness through the ringing in her ears.
“I have got to go and get some sleep; I think I’m going crazy”, She muttered to herself, lowering her head into her hands and nervously rubbing at her eyes.
“Got to get some sleep”
She patted David’s hand awkwardly and stood up slowly, bracing herself against the doorframe briefly. She opened the door just a crack to see if there was anybody about.
The hospital staff were still huddled around the desk and she shuffled along the corridor towards the room that had been set aside for her.
She called out to the staff nurse, “I need to lie down for half an hour or so until Melina gets here, could you come and get me when she arrives?”

The staff nurse nodded her head, engrossed in whatever they were watching.
After a couple of seconds delay, she turned her head round to speak to Sylvia but she had already closed the door behind her.
She shook her head. “Poor love”

Once inside Sylvia kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed fully clothed. She stretched out her arm and pulled the light switch cord, plunging the room into complete darkness. She realised that she was still shivering and pulled the blanket over herself and curled up in a ball.
“What is happening?” she thought to herself closing her eyes tightly.
The room seemed empty without any humming or beeping which unnerved her momentarily as she was accustomed to the machines in her son’s room. But the tiredness overwhelmed any anxiety and she fell into a deep sleep.

Re-entry

The whirlpool of lights spun faster and faster, intermingled with a multitude of wavering rainbows, streaks of iridescence which determine the trajectory. A substance travelling through the worlds; through distortions of places and atmospheres long forgotten by human perception. The colour spectrum pulsates in synchronicity with the harmonic overtones of his guardians. A rollercoaster ride through the dimensions as the entity, whose life began as the small child David, hurtled back towards his family and his mission.

The pulsating spectrum metamorphosed into white noise static and a pinpoint of light appeared far away in the distance, gaining in intensity and velocity as it approached David’s soul essence and he travelled towards it. An implosion, at the point of contact a blue white light flashed with the intensity of a lightening bolt. It struck David’s body causing him to sit upright in the hospital bed. He coughed, trying to catch his breath as a shiver ripped through his spine making him quiver uncontrollably. His body felt kind of numb and unresponsive but he pushed the sheets aside, regardless, and swung his feet around to the side of the bed. He looked down at his chest and arms, at the numerous patches connecting him to the machines.
He coughed again, pulling at the patches, peeling them off one by one.

“I need water”, he thought to himself.

After removing the last of the monitoring devices he slid forward, putting his bare feet on the tiles. The coldness made him shudder. He stood upright and pushed himself away from the bed and walked, as if he had been doing it all his life. He had aligned himself within his body almost instantaneously, but still regained the consciousness of having no physical form as strongly as he had felt it for the last ten years.

He shrugged his shoulders, striding towards the door. He stopped as soon as he realised that there was no door handle. He experienced momentary confusion and cautiously reached out with his hand, pushing the large wooden panel. To his surprise, the door swung open, without any effort. Relieved and somewhat embarrassed he walked through the door into the dimly lit corridor.

“Hello” he whispered, “anybody out here?”

The three nurses behind the counter were gawping at him, dumbfounded. He felt awkward and shy, in the path of their stare. Tentatively he enquired,

“Could you tell me where I can get a glass of water please?”

The spell was broken and they clattered out from behind the desk, two of them of them muttering to each other,

“I wouldn’t have believed it, not in a million years”

“She said he was going to wake up”
“But he shouldn’t be walking should he?”

The charge nurse shook herself, in disbelief, and turned to the other two nurses putting her finger to her lips and hissing at them,
“Shhhh”
She walked across the hallway to David.
“Mr Price, do you know where you are?”

She reached out to take his arm and gently manoeuvred him back towards the direction of his room.

David replied, “It looks like a hospital to me”

“Very good” she said, “I think you should come with me back into your room and one of the nurses will get you a bottle of water”

She turned her head back to the two nurses, who were standing, open mouthed,
“And the other can please go and wake his mother”

“Thank you” David sighed, “I’m alright really, and you don’t have to fuss”

She nodded, “I know but I just want to make sure, now that you are awake, that we don’t have any misdemeanours like you getting dizzy and falling and hurting yourself, ok?”

“Ok” David replied, taking a deep breath and letting himself be led back into the room, “Do you mind if I sit in the chair instead of lying in the bed, only I think my body has had enough of lying down for the moment?”

The nurse reddened a little and attempted to conceal it with a smile,

“I don’t see why not, here you go”, she said

She let him sit in the chair, waiting just in case he needed support but somehow he seemed strong enough to manage by himself. She stood up and made her way to the door,

“The doctor will be in to see you imminently, I would imagine.”

David raised his head, eyes sparkling in the dim room.
“I’ll look forward to it”, he said with a wry smile.

He relaxed back into the chair, half closing his eyes.
“They are not going to take too well to what I have to tell them.” He thought.

“Patience David, you will need lots of patience” The female voice that had accompanied him throughout his journey spoke softly to him. Not in the room but in the darkest recess of his mind.

“Hmmm” he said out loud, “It could be tricky you know especially if I tell them that I’m hearing voices. You know what they do to people who openly admit to that, don’t you.”

He looked across the room at the assortment of machines that had been monitoring his body, and the discarded patches lying on the floor where he had dropped them.

“And it could all have been in vain if they had let my mother switch off those machines” He muttered under his breath,
“You never did explain to me why the electrical impulses stopped me from losing contact with my body, did you?”

He looked up at the ceiling as he waited for an answer, and then nodded,
“I guessed it might be something to do with the magnetic field of the body”

The door swung open and in strode the doctor, his mom and a girl that looked familiar to him, but he couldn’t quite place her.

“Oh my god” Sylvia cried, tears streaming down her face as she rushed across the room to her son. She fell to her knees on the floor in front of him, taking both hands in hers.
“It’s really happening, you’re awake, I..I” she stuttered, burying her face in his hands.

“I love you too mom” David smiled at her. He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.
The doctor and the young girl stared at each other, and then back to the mother and son; reunited after ten years in stasis. The word miracle was on the tip of everybody’s tongue but nobody had been brave enough to venture it our loud as yet.
Time stood still in the tiny hospital room as the reunion stole the importance of the moment. The two onlookers shared in that moment, sympathetically, but also felt the compelling urge to back away from it, as if they were intruding on this extraordinary event.

David looked up at them, connecting with their gaze, saying
“It’s ok; you can ask me”

He focussed on the doctor first. He watched him with unblinking eyes, listening intently to the reeling thoughts as he struggled to single out a question. The doctor said nothing and in desperation looked at the girl standing beside him,
“Do you want to talk to him first miss?” he muttered almost inaudibly

She, on the other hand, boldly walked across the room, stopping a couple of paces from David and his mom. She reached out and offered him the bottle of water the nurse had given her.

“I’m Melina Watts, I spoke with your mother on the telephone an hour or so ago. I was coming to talk to her about the messages that I received from you while you were in your coma.”

He reached out and took the bottle from her,
“Thank you” he replied. He removed the top from the bottle as quickly as he could and gulped the water down. He didn’t stop until he had drained the last drop, letting out a satisfied sigh and squashing the plastic bottle while replacing the lid.
Sylvia sniffled and sat up to see Melina.

“Hi,”, she let her hands drop into her lap and looked back at David, “I was so worried, she said you thought you were dead and then I had this weird thing happen. I’m not quite sure what it was, I felt like I left my body and then I heard you.”

David was taking all of this in and at the same time soaking up all the unasked questions and thoughts from the minds of the three people in the room. He put the water bottle down by his feet, ruffled his hair and started to explain,
“Mom, what you heard when you had an out of body experience, and the part of me that you talked to Melina, they were a part of my consciousness that broke away from me at the time of my accident. I experienced dual consciousness while I was in a state of suspension.”

The room was silent, as all listened intently to David, whether or not they understood what he was saying would be made clear soon enough. He looked from one to the other as he commenced,
“The echoes of my thoughts, being torn away from my family, have been resonating in the ether; as a childlike consciousness crying out for its mother. I have experienced the life of a scared trapped child; in a dark place oppressed alone, and at the same time my other consciousness has learned much, matured well beyond the possibility of that which could be learned in a human lifetime.”

The doctor was the first to respond now that he had come out of his shocked state and plunged straight into one of denial,
“You know, you could be experiencing temporary confusion after being in suspended animation for so long, maybe if you…”

David interrupted him saying, “Forgive me but there are things you don’t understand about the nature of human consciousness and until you break down the barriers that you have constructed, you will never come close to understanding it. And even then, the evolution of consciousness will take many lifetimes and will never be complete in the sense that the more wisdom and knowledge acquired, the more it becomes akin to the vibrations and essence of pure intelligence.”

You could have heard a pin drop amid the silence. David wondered whether there was any point in trying to explain further. The voice in his head spoke quietly to him that he should emphasise his explanation at this time.

“Everything is cyclical in nature, and so too is human consciousness. The popular misconception of singularity of the human soul will be altered beyond recognition and beginning with duality, there will be a shift; it will have its own consciousness but it will also be linked to the rest of humanity as a group soul; to which all will have access. Extrasensory perception, thought transference, mind-reading, sixth sense, telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, will no longer be attributed to paranormal occurrences but will be widely understood as being functions of the human mind that were misunderstood as being a separate entity outside of human consciousness. They are an integral part of the workings of every human mind and it is just that most people let themselves be talked into believing that these things do not exist. The innocence of a child has no preconceived notions of intelligence; it just experiences what happens to it. Every human being should have the chance to develop those latent abilities instead of having them ritually beaten out of them by enforced knowledge.”

They all stared at him in awe and pure astonishment, reeling in the concepts put forward by him in that moment. David sighed and slowly raised himself from the chair and walked towards the bed. They all relaxed a little, assuming that he was going to lie down on the bed, but instead he reached under the pillow retrieving the box that had lain underneath his head during his hospitalisation. He walked back towards his mom and gently encouraged her to get up from the floor and sit in the chair. He addressed the doctor while doing so,

“I assume that you will want to do numerous tests before you will let me leave the hospital but could you leave me with my mom and Melina for a while? I know it’s late but I just need a moment with them before we all retire for the night.”

The doctor nodded, humbly, and shuffled out of the room, “It won’t be until the morning anyway” he mumbled as he pushed the door, “I’ll see you then”
The noise of the hinges, and the door scraping against the floor was the only audible sound in the room. Melina and David’s mom were both silent in contemplation.
Melina sat in the chair at the other end of the room as David perched on the edge of his bed. He took the lid from the small box and placed it on the white sheet.
The emerald point gleamed at him; even though the light in the room was dim it sparkled with fierce intent.

“What is that David?” his mom enquired.

“This was the beginning of my fate”, he replied, taking the loose end of the chain and lifting the crystal out of the box. All three of them gazed into the green luminescence of the emerald while David explained,
“I found this in the attic just before I had the accident. It had been programmed to take me from this world, to be a gateway for my safe passage through the dimensions. I didn’t want to mention certain things while the doctor was in the room as he would only insist on my mind being irrepairably damaged, and thus causing confusion. Melina, surely you must be aware of the other dimensional worlds and its occupants?”

“Well, “she paused, her cheeks coloured slightly and she shifted awkwardly in her chair “I guess so, but different people perceive them as being different things. Some people, like me see, them as being the consciousness of those who have passed on.”

David breathed heavily and paused before saying,
“There is much more to it than that, there are forms of intelligence surrounding us all the time that are unperceivable by average human sight; as untrained eyes are only capable of seeing a fraction of the colour spectrum and their intelligence manifests itself in light vibrations and sound waves. What you do is a step in the right direction but you are distracted by needing a logical explanation for where the information comes from. You have to be tuned in to their frequency to be aware of their existence let alone understand what they communicate to you. The Auraeliah are energy beings who, after fine tuning my cognition and reprogramming my DNA to attune my consciousness to their communication, taught me the universal laws so that when I returned, I could share this knowledge with all humanity. They are not going to save us from the disasters that we create, we can only do that by ourselves but they want to assist those who feel like they can make a difference and help create some balance. Just because those who are running the show at the moment are making such a mess of it, it doesn’t mean that they will be there forever. It is time to make some changes, with their help.”

Sylvia was weeping silently. She knew that her son was speaking the truth but at the same time she knew that it didn’t matter how much sense it made, people were going to misunderstand everything that he said.

Melina was calm and nodded her head in affirmation of David’s explanation. She had always felt that there was something else but had never managed to put her finger on it. They had all lost any sense of time, in that place, but collectively knew that any moment now the discussion would have to be put to bed until the next day.

They all turned to look at the door simultaneously as the staff nurse poked her head around the door.
“Time to put out all the lights I’m afraid.”

David and Sylvia got up and hugged each other tightly.
“Go home and get some sleep, promise?” David whispered to her, “I am going to be just fine and you need to look after yourself, ok? Tell Patty I expect her to be here when I walk out of this hospital tomorrow.”
She nodded and reluctantly let him go.
“Thank you for being here Melina.” David smiled at her, “You will be seeing a lot more of me from now on.”

Melina blushed and laughed nervously, “I’ll look forward to that.” She replied and made her way out of the door. Sylvia walked behind her and checked back once more; blinking back tears as she smiled at her son, and then she walked out of the room.

David sat back in his chair pondering his future.
He had something inside of him that was going to change the course of history, to bring the evolution of humanity forward into times of understanding. He couldn’t let any of the former misconceptions slide. No matter how much of a hard time they had understanding that they had cheated themselves out of their gifts, merely by shutting themselves off from possibilities, he would stop only when they were illuminated by this knowledge and could utilise it for positive action.

He got up from the chair and stretched his arms above his head, then walked over to the bed. This would be the last night he would spend in this hospital and it would be a long night of contemplation. He climbed onto the bed and lay with his hands covering his chest, breathing slowly and deliberately from his abdomen. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of his breathing.

As David relaxed into the sounds he thought to himself,

“It is closer to the truth that most people are afraid to look inside themselves to discover their abilities as it is easier to satiate themselves with the beliefs of others, regardless of its eligibility. Complacency should be avoided at all costs as it eats away at the spark of ingenuity and darkens the pathway towards enlightenment. Humans are capable of so much more than they give themselves credit for. Learning to look inward for their guiding light and accepting every other creature as individual pieces of a whole is a lesson that would be well learned by everyone.”

©Jade Ashcroft 2008