Under a Watchful Eye(36)

Ewan slumped back and released an exasperated sigh. ‘Our minds are the key, or what is held inside our minds is the key. But our minds are also the jailors. Anxiety, or surprise, or shock, or any conscious activity can disrupt the experience. I could not linger, as so many others had done before me, in that state. There was instinctive panic. A primal anxiety, the dread of not being able to return. The survival instinct, it’s in the body. And nothing that I could do about it. Unless I stopped taking my medication. Then, I would leave my body so dramatically during a fit, and the experience would last for longer, and more intensely, while my body was in shock. Only while my body was close to death could the soul-body better escape.’

‘You’re not taking the meds now, are you?’

‘I don’t have any,’ Ewan said in a voice as piteous as Seb had heard yet.

So that he could terrorize Seb, Ewan had put his health in the gravest danger. ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘There was no way it was all a daydream, or a hallucination, a delusion. Where I ended up is hyper-real. My acuity was incredible. I could even see dust motes. Every colour was beautiful. I put a print in my room, a Van Gogh, and I saw what he had seen, but barely managed to transcribe into a great painting.

‘Everything around me was living, emitting, transporting. Twice, when I was drawn upwards and suspended, I even managed to touch the ceiling. Where the paint was rough, the sensation in my fingertips was so exaggerated that I could have been touching broken glass. Where the paintwork was smooth, I could have been touching sandpaper. And I was willing myself to move. Don’t you see? I was moving on the ceiling of that room. You can’t imagine it.

‘So where else could I go? What else was possible? And the light! My God, the light. If you saw a glimpse of it right now, in here, you would weep. You would dream of it every day for the rest of your life. You would crave it. That is how moonlight should be, enchanted. It was my spirit that was generating that light. Me. The inmost light.

‘Soon, I was beginning to notice myself too, as a form. My ability was evolving. It was adding limbs that weren’t really there. I even put a mirror in my room and angled it so that I would see myself if I separated. And I managed to see myself once, in the air while my body lay beneath me on the bed. I could see part of myself, just adrift, floating. I’d wanted to see myself, so I had focused on seeing myself, and I did. There were two of me in that room.

‘I could think too. And remember things more clearly than at any other time in my life. But it’s not like reasoning. Everything just came to me at once, in a flash. I could see, hear, feel everything more acutely. It’s not a dream. I was more conscious. I was more intelligent. I’d never been so wide awake and never experienced such a wonderful feeling. The weightlessness as you ascend . . . The vitality you feel. The delight in seeing the world so bright and alive in a way it never was before. There’s no pain, only joy.

‘And in that form, I could also see three hundred and sixty degrees without turning my head. I only had to want to see behind myself and I could. It was subtle. A nuance of the experience. So I knew that I could also look beyond a wall, or a ceiling, or anything solid if I so desired. Sometimes, I would be looking down at myself in the bed, with everything below me appearing small, while behind me was infinity, a vast blackness.

‘What if I could also move further away from where my physical self lay, and I could travel beyond the room? That was my thinking. I sensed that movement to other places could be instantaneous. And in time it was.’

Ewan grinned his yellow grin. ‘As you can attest.’

‘Someone else taught you how to go further.’

Ewan’s grin became a smile though it was less pleasant than the previous expression. ‘I’m tired. If you want to know more, you’ll have to read my book.’

Even after what he’d just listened to, Seb found it difficult to want to know that much. ‘So what happens now?’

‘That’s entirely up to you.’

‘You can’t stay here.’

‘Only until you’ve worked on my book. This is a great opportunity for you.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that. And I don’t believe you, or trust anything that you say. That’s my main problem. There is also a massive collection of fragments in my living room, scattered inside two bin bags. I don’t have the time to work on that. So I’m happy with a synopsis of the remainder of your story. The part that takes you from your mother’s spare bedroom to here.’

‘That’s far too complicated. You wouldn’t understand, or believe it for that matter. I’m afraid that would be a bit too much for you. Better to read it. The manuscript is a bit more considered.’

‘It’s the bit more that concerns me. And you clearly have no intention of going anywhere, and neither do I, so spill.’

Ewan immediately became uncomfortable and adopted a more serious tone. ‘I don’t feel comfortable talking about it. Not right now. I don’t feel well. For fuck’s sake, I’ve had a massive bloody fit and you’re interrogating me.’

‘That’s not why you won’t talk.’ Seb wanted to be more than a little astonished by the story he’d just heard, but he found that he couldn’t get past the situation, nor past what use Ewan’s great ‘gift’ had ultimately been put to. He also knew that he had heard an incomplete version of events. An embellished version probably existed inside the bin bags too. Ewan was not an honest man and he was playing for time.