Day Four

He figured perhaps he was being far too hard on himself. Yes, of course he had made mistakes but there had been joys too. Like when he became a father for the first time and the tiny bundle that was his son was finally placed in his arms. Lucy’s pregnancy had gone into overtime and her labour was far from quick and easy. Back in those days, men were not allowed in the delivery room and Alfie was glad of that. He did not think he could have taken the guilt of seeing someone he loved in so much pain. His son had been present with his own wife as she gave birth but he had been traumatised and distressed by the experience. Alfie had tried to joke with him about it but the lad had not even raised a smile.

But then Elliot had never been one for jokes. There were many times when he had tried to engage the lad in banter but Elliot had simply rolled his eyes. If they were out in public, Elliot avoiding looking or speaking to his father as if he were ashamed or embarrassed. This unreasonableness made Alfie angry. He  didn’t expect Elliot to love him unconditionally the way some fathers expected but, dammit, he thought Elliot could have put a bit more effort into acting as if he were a little bit grateful for what his old man had provided for him.

Alfie looked down again at his dead face. He was glad he hadn’t suffered! How many times did he toss and turn in bed, fretful of a searing pain in his chest or worried about some radical cancer treatment. As a kid, he used to hate to travel in cars because he was afraid of being in an accident, becoming trapped and burning alive. He wondered if his wife had suffered, if she lay in silent agony, unable to tell anyone she was needed pain killers or something to take the edge off. And then he wondered if she too had been like him, stuck in a place she wanted to escape but unable to find the way out.

And then it hit him: what if he could find her somehow? He could tell her he was sorry for his wrong doing. He’d tell her he was sorry he tried to put a spanner in the works over her job at the nursing home. He would tell her he was sure she had been a comfort to all those people in the home.

Lucy had seen many dead bodies. Towards the end of her work career, death became so frequent that she had been practically impervious to the death of others. She would even forget to tell him so and so had died when she had spent so much time regaling him in the characters and the past lives of the people she took care of. She was such a good mimic. She could tell stories so well that Alfie would sometimes forget he wasn’t actually their friend. Every voice nuance, the gestures, the physical characteristics she could describe to him in perfect detail.

She would sometimes be sad too. She especially hated it when a young person came in. Once, there was a man named Les who had a waxy complexion and a ring of white hair. He had had diabetes and had lost a foot and one of his lower legs. He could not have been more than 50 years old.

“He was a mess,” Lucy had said. The worse part about looking after Les was the vacancy in his eyes. “He had just given up on everything,” she had told Alfie sadly. She had cut his over groan hair and helped him to shave, gave him sponge baths—the only thing that prevented Alfie from being jealous was that she also cleaned his soiled bed linen and emptied his potty every day.

Alfie had to admit he was glad to have been spared the indignity of being wheeled to the corner of a room for volition and then having some pretty nurse comment or write notes on what had been left in the pot. Lucy had said very often patients would not have any privacy to do their business. And everyone had come to expect that their bodily functions would be discussed openly. Yes, he was very glad to have been killed without even being aware of it.

He thought about the shadowy corridor again. It was a risk but he had seen his body and had accepted that things could have been much, much worse. Perhaps it was time to see what was on the other side of the door.

He stood up again and walked up the stairs. He felt youthful again without having to drag around his body. Again he stood in front of the door that had not been there before and looked at it. He reached a hand out to see if it would go through like it did through the kettle. It did. He pulled his hand back out to inspect it and saw no damage. When he was newly married he and Lucy used to like to watch those creepy episodes on telly, the ones that always had the twist in the end. There was one where a guy had stuck his head through a portal and to him he was in a different world but the rest of his body remained half in half out of this dimension. His friends had screamed and shout for him to hurry up because the portal was closing, threatening to imprison him in the weird, other universe.

Before he could think too much about it, Alfie stepped through the door and landed with a very silent thud in the grass between his own and his neighbour’s house. He looked up from where he had fallen and was glad he was dead—the fall might have killed him. He couldn’t describe the fall as feeling particularly painful but there was a sort of jolt that made him glad he didn’t feel anything.

There was nothing remarkable about being outside. He didn’t feel heat or cold or air pressure. He couldn’t smell the grass or feel the grass beneath his feet—all of which was fortunate as in his rush to get out, he hadn’t put on his proper shoes. His feet were clad in mere slippers. Well, and thank goodness, no one can see me, he thought to himself.

Alfie strolled to the pavement just outside of his house. He looked down one side of the street and up the other. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. A few cars passed by but no one looked at him, just as it had been when he was alive. He had somehow become invisible even before he became a ghost.

He was just about to walk to the park when something caught his eye. Next to his neighbour’s front door, there looked to be another portal. For a few seconds he thought maybe every house had a portal but when he glanced around, he could see no others.

Aha! Alfie thought to himself. That was the trick—he was supposed to go through the portals!! Feeling pleased with how clever he was, he walked straight up his neighbour’s house as if had a done it every day in a different lifetime. In fact, he had never even seen the neighbours. He knew there were children because every once in a while, one of the balls thudded against his side of the house. For just a few seconds, Alfie considered the shadowy portal and then plunged straight into his neighbour’s front room

Luckily no one was in. At least as not as far as he could see. A dog came running into the room and barked, looking straight Alfie. He jumped in surprise.  The dog continued to bark and make a terrible racket. To test if the dog could see him, he walked over to the other side of the room. The dog continued to bark at him

A man he did not recognise came into the front room and Alfie froze on the spot.

“Shut up, you mangy old hound!” The man shouted at the dog.

The dog kept barking. The man rolled a newspaper and the dog immediately quieted, turned a few circles and lay down, its fearful eyes still regarding Alfie nervously. The man left the room.

The dog could see him but the man couldn’t!! This delighted him. Alfie turned away from the dog and wriggled his bum at it. He grabbed his crotch and mouthed “bite this, pooch!” but the poor dog only whined quietly. Taking it as a signal, Alfie walked over to the dog and held his hand out as if to stroke it. Immediately the dog was on his feet again, barking furiously. It hunched down, growling and then suddenly pounced at him. Had he been alive, the dog might have bitten a chunk out of his arm but as he wasn’t, the dog flew right through him. Alfie and the dog whirled around to face each other again. The dog hunched down again but this time not in aggression but in a gesture that almost seemed to ask Alfie for mercy. It kept its eyes on him as it backed away from him. . If it hadn’t been for the pleading gesture, Alfie might have thought the whole thing funny. But something about the dog’s fear made him feel very guilty.

It was the look Lucy had on her face when he had hit her. She had been stunned and hurt and her anger had been completely sucked out of her the instant his open hand had struck her cheek. She too had backed away from him, not daring to turn her back on him. What had she expected him to do?

“She expected you to keep going,” a voice said.

Alfie turned and was stunned to see Steven sitting on the coach.

“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost!” Steven said, smiling.

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t expect to see you here,” Alfie told him. Steven was still a young man even though in life, they had been similar ages. There was no sign of the injuries Steven had suffered that caused his death and Alfie was very glad of that. He had cried when his mother told him about the accident even though he was old enough to have reacted a bit more maturely.

Steven smiled mildly at Alfie. “I don’t know how you’re going to take this but I’m glad you’re here,” he said to Alfie. “I was kind of half tempted to push you in front of a bus on occasion but I resisted.”

Alfie was just about to ask Steven what they meant to do but Steven started fading and just before he disappeared completely, he gave a little wave.

“Hold on now, dammit,” he called out. “What am I supposed to do now?”

But there was no answer.

For several seconds, Alfie was at a loss. But then he decided he should have a look around. After all, it wasn’t every day that he got into his next door neighbour’s house.

As it turned out, there were five children in the household. The children were all very young, none of them in adolescence yet and the baby was still being breastfed. All of them had roses in their cheeks and seemed very glad to be home with their parents after a long day at school.

Not sure I like Steven coming in--I don't want this to be like A Christmas Carol where the main character sees where he is going wrong. I like the dog bit as I've seen dogs bark at absoluely nothing and I've wondered if they had seen a ghost.
Anyway, I wrote this after a long day at school and although I'd rather write in the morning, I'm glad I'm sticking to the programme. I'm just over 8,000 words. So I'm off home now. . .