The Protector of Memories (The Veil of Death Book 1) (2 page)

“Do not stop the car Alice. We do not know who we can trust.”

Nodding her head in agreement, Alice put her foot down on the accelerator, turned right – took the corner too sharply and ran the car onto the pavement. “Shit.” she said. “Sorry.”

Charity in the meantime had made a calculation. She grabbed Alice’s phone, dialled Alastair’s number and when she heard his voice on the other end she gave him some directions and then ordered, “Get an ambulance there now!” She shouted and hung up on him in mid-sentence.

Alice frowned;
what ambulance?
She pulled up at a set of traffic lights, checked her mirror - took some deep breaths. “What did you just mean, ‘get an ambulance?” But frowned at the sight of Charity’s hair colour; grey, “how come your hairs gone_?

The sound of a car’s horn blared out.

Alice looked up, saw the green light and accelerated faster than she had anticipated.

At that moment, her vision started to blur.

“I can’t see… it’s gone all fuzzy. I don’t feel_.”

Charity unlocked Alice’s seatbelt seconds before the young girl passed out – face down onto the steering wheel.

The car veered over the central grass verge, into the oncoming traffic and smashed head on into a London bus.

Alice’s body flew out of the shattered window screen and landed onto the bonnet of the bus. She died on impact.

The Mist of Death claimed the Soul that left the body of Alice Crewmonger.

Charity raised her arms, covering her face.

The air-bag inflated at the same moment the bulk of plastic from the dashboard hoisted up and forward.

The force of the air-bag broke a bone in Charity’s left arm.

Kathy Jones, the driver in the blue mini travelling behind the London bus, swerved into the middle of the road to avoid impact with the back of it. But she hit the accelerator pedal instead of the brake, knocked down and ran over a cyclist, Peter Lane, before ploughing into the stationery black cab that had been travelling behind the car that Alice was driving.

The Mist of Death claimed the Souls that left the bodies of Kathy Jones and Peter Lane.

The cab driver, Eric Mares, broke his nose on the air bag that had burst onto his face.

His passenger, Roger Stanmore, was not wearing his seat-belt and was thrown head first onto the Perspex screen between driver and passenger.

He was killed outright.

The Mist of Death claimed the Soul that left the body of Roger Stanmore.

Car horns pierced the airwaves.

Screams joined the cries of the injured and the silence of the dead.

The sound of sirens from police, fire and ambulance vehicles blared out in the distance as they hurtled toward the scene of carnage.

The Souls hovered above their dead bodies and marvelled at the fine mirrored veil that floated in front of people’s eyes.

And only then did they realise that the Afterlife did not exist… it was nothing but an illusion… an illusion of a fine veil that hid ghosts from the sight of humankind.

Threads of light and electricity fizzled and whizzed all around them and a thread from each Soul was woven into the fine material of the veil.

A discovery was made known unto them - they were a very part of that life-force.

So much life ebbed and flowed, shifted, sparkled, danced and soared.

Oh how it felt good… it felt good to feel alive.

It was then made known to the new arrivals of Souls that they existed beyond limits and boundaries of the physical form but in order for their ‘presence’ to be felt then it is wisest to adopt the image of the human form that they had when they lived as a human being.

Upon that advice, many a Soul did just that and they discovered that their presence was felt… but only through those who still had their sixth sense.

But then a shift occurred.

Not all Souls were a part of the life-force that flowed around them.

When they tried to join the threads of energy it disintegrated.

Who are we_?

These ghosts felt a sense of crumbling…

A blinding light seared right through their Soul.

And then they felt nothing, not even an awareness of their Self.

These creatures known as Empty Ghosts floated within a prison of Darkness and all who resided here existed within a state of emptiness and so there was only the silence; for what creature with no memories of life or sense of their Self, questioned their existence?

Faith
[ii]
was nearing the end of her medium session that she held in the conference room at her local library in Marylebone.

The room was relatively quiet apart from the odd muffled cough… creaks from the chairs as bodies shuffled and shifted in them.

She smiled and nodded to the mortals in the room but she did not say anything to them.

Faith only spoke when a ghost asked if she would relay a message - and even then she quoted only the words of the ghost who spoke them. She sighed aloud at the people staring at her. She could not bear the sea of faces… all those eyes – staring at her – she looked down and picked at the skin around her finger nails. She was uncomfortable in the company of the twenty-first century mortal. “You think we don’t exist,” Faith said loudly, “you say we are not real but that of myths - creations of mankind.” She frowned.

“You treat my race of immortals as you do your ghosts.”

The group of people sitting in the front row nudged one another. “She’s at it again,” a lady whispered, “insisting that she comes from the Universe.”

Faith had tried so hard to ignore their words – tried so hard to let them flow over her.

But as always it is the mortal’s words that lingered the longest within her mind.

She placed her fingertips either side of her head to control the echoes before they became too loud. “I cast you out for they are not of my Self.”

When she heard the sounds of the mortals laughing, Faith looked directly into their eyes. “You give me laughter that I know not of.”

The room fell into silence.

After a couple of minutes, Faith said. “You don’t believe in my world and you barely believe in your ghosts?”

She stared at the woman in her direct line of vision - watched her breathing – in and out… out and in.
Does she not see the ghost?

Faith pointed at the woman, Dawn Woodhouse and asked her, “You see not the ghost that resides in your vessel? You hear it not_.”

“What do you mean by that?” Dawn’s brother, Trevor demanded.

Linda, the library’s ‘Public Relations’ person, quickly positioned herself between Faith and the man. “Can you please sit down?”

Trevor stared up at Linda and reckoned her to be well over six feet tall. She was athletically built with fiery red hair and her eyes were a lighter shade of green… no? They were blue – no? They were grey_?

Dawn, coughed, pulled at her brother’s trouser leg and insisted that he sat back down.

“No Dawn. I’m not sitting down until she…” he nodded over toward Faith, “not until she tells me what she meant. She’s saying you’ve been possessed. It’s not right.”

Linda repeated her request. “Please sit down or you’ll have to leave the gathering.”

He was about to argue but Dawn tugged at his trouser leg again. “Leave it Trevor.”

“Bloody women,” he mumbled irritably. “We’ve a bleeding right to know what she meant by that.” But he reluctantly sat back down for the sake of his sister.

A couple of minutes passed by and Faith was about to suggest that they finish the gathering when suddenly she heard the voice of Mother Earth.

Faith looked around the room and realised that only she had heard the rippling of the claim and was about to question the mortals but they were pointing their fingers in her direction.

She looked down at her hands that had aged and pulling up the sleeves of her jumper realised that the skin surrounding her mortal body was undergoing some rather rapid changes.

“Look at her hair!” A woman shouted. “It’s gone white.”

“My God!” somebody else shouted, “look at her face it’s…”

“Bloody hell! She’s being possessed!”

It was not the vessel of the body that worried Faith but that of her mortal mind; she could feel it struggling to make sense of and contain all her memories, experiences… knowledge.

She was filled with an overwhelming sense of panic… loneliness at the thought of not being able to see the ghosts now that her abilities equalled those of the mortals. She closed her eyes, put her hands together and when she felt the calming of her heart’s beat, she dared to open them again.

Relief seared throughout her body at the sight of so many images of ghosts flickering in and out of the conference room walls, ceilings and floors.

“Thank the stars,” she whispered to them all in happiness.

Faith now looked to the living as well as their ghosts and realised that she still had the sighting of the auras. If she had that then would she still be able to manipulate the energies?

She held her breath in anticipation and tried to make contact with the mortal’s emotional energy of panic. But when she touched it, it fizzled and faded. “So be it_.”

Giddiness thumped into Faith’s mind, followed by a mass of voices.

She tried to regain some semblance of clarity but when she concentrated upon each voice, Faith found that she could not distinguish between her own voice, the ghosts or the words from the mortals. “Is this what the mortal mind has to endure?” She asked of her creator. “So many voices… they speak all at once. Be quiet… be quiet.”

The echoes from the ghost’s words clawed louder… and noisier. Their voices felt heavy as footsteps as each of them clambered over the other to be heard.

She scratched at her scalp, violently and incessantly. “Be quiet!” She told them.

But their echoes continued to whisper, claw and scratch.

Blackness thumped into her mind and she passed out.

∞

Brian, another member of the library’s staff, was working behind the main desk when everybody came running out of the conference room – screaming and panicking.

He was in his middle fifties, five feet six inches tall, stocky in build with short, sandy-coloured hair. He was a ‘Londoner’ through and through and proud of it.

Brian tried to calm everybody down but the noise in the main lobby area was horrendous.

Wooden doors crashed against the brick wall.

A mass of voices shouted and screamed as people became crushed within the revolution of the library’s main entrance doors.

“She’s being possessed!”

“The library’s haunted!”

“Something’s happened to Faith!”

When Brian had restored order once more to the library, he locked the main entrance doors and was amazed at how people still managed to surprise him.

They moan when nothing happens and they moan if something does happen. “It’s a medium session,” he muttered as he made his way back toward the conference room. “Ghosts is what you want but when you get em.” He laughed aloud as he entered the room and made his way toward Faith and Linda.

But his laughter stopped in mid-track. “Bloody Nora,” he said and stared agog at Faith’s face that was covered in lines and wrinkles. “You’ve aged. How…?” He began to say, but what he was witnessing rendered him speechless.

Brian rubbed his hand over his chin and shook his head in disbelief.

Linda coughed quietly to get Brian’s attention.

Brain looked at Linda and realised that he had been staring at Faith with his mouth open. “Sorry,” he mumbled and added. “I think you’d better take Faith into the staff room. I’ve secured the entrance doors…” he looked at his watch. The library was not to close for another couple of hours but he didn’t care. “I’ll put a notice up saying…” Brian hesitated, “the library is haunted.” He laughed at his own joke but then fell silent.

“Can you manage to walk?” Linda asked Faith.

Faith nodded and stood.

Linda helped her friend over toward another set of doors that led directly into a private corridor and finally into the conservatory that acted as the staff room.

She sat Faith down into the wicker two-seater sofa and herself into the sofa opposite and stared at Faith’s face in amazement. She had considered Faith to be an extraordinarily beautiful woman. ‘English Rose’ was what Brian had said when he had first seen Faith. He was right – her complexion was flawless…
still is
. The only difference was that her face was etched deep with lines that had not existed until moments ago.

Linda leant forward to get a better look at Faith’s hair; thicker strands of white now ran through the brunette colouring and she realised that age had added an elegant beauty to Faith.

“Tea?” Linda asked as she walked over to the small kitchen area. She filled the kettle, put the bags into mugs and turned and looked at Faith. “How you doing?” she asked quietly, but wished that she could come up with something better than that. She squeezed Faith’s shoulder gently and concentrated on making them some tea.

Mortal minutes lived and died.

Linda handed a mug to Faith and sat back down again.

“Thank you.” Faith said and drank the liquid, flinching when its heat burnt her lips and throat, but she continued to drink the sweet, hot liquid until it was all gone.

She handed the empty mug back to Linda. “Thank you.” Faith repeated and leant back into the sofa’s soft cushions and felt the energy drain away from her body – she had never felt this tired in the whole of her existence.

“Mortal.” Faith said aloud. “I possessed an unfair advantage over you all. Whilst I lived within my Unity, all that I had to do was draw from the energies of vitality… well-being.” She looked up at Linda. “How do you manage to live your life with the sounds of so many voices in your mind?”

“Most of us usually hear only one voice.” She tapped the side of her head and added, “Our own voice is usually the only one that we can hear.”

Faith nodded and put her head in her hands.

“Is there anybody I can ring for you?” Linda asked and realised how little she really knew about Faith.

“My sister… yes I need to ring my sister.” Faith retrieved her phone from her trouser pocket, sought ‘C’ and pressed ‘dial’ and was about to speak but Charity spoke first.

And then when Faith did speak, she realised that Charity had already hung up on her.

“She is busy.” Faith told Linda and ran her hands through her hair and over her face. “I cannot explain what is happening… I do not know_.”

Faith stopped talking.

Of course she knew what was happening.

She didn’t want to lie to Linda but she did not want to tell her the truth either.

Faith sat quietly until a few more mortal minutes had ebbed and flowed. “I’ll try Charity again.” She said but this time she had to hold the phone away from her ear as her sister’s voice hollered down the phone at her.

Faith opened her mouth to speak but realised that she had been hung up on again. “How is it that the energies of joy turn so quickly to that of anger?” She whispered and thought now to her other sister, Hope.

“Hope. I will ring Hope… she’ll not hear her phone ringing above the music, song, laughter and dance that fills her home. I’ll leave her a message.”

And when the prompt came, she said. “Hope. I still behold the sighting of the auras. I can see those within the Realm of the Afterlife. Other than that, I am now a simple human being. I will be with you within the hour.”

Faith clicked off the phone, leant back into the chair and rubbed at her temples.

“Stop talking all at once.” Faith said to the ghosts.

“Pardon?” Linda questioned.

“The ghosts… they talk all at once. So many voices clawing at my mind.” Faith scratched her head – her scalp. “Itching, itching, itching,” she muttered and continued to scratch violently at her scalp. “I am mortal now. I do not hear each of you with the clarity that I did but moments earlier?”

Linda frowned at Faith’s scalp and at the red speckles of blood that were now appearing. She was about to try and coax her hands away but Faith stood up and suddenly explained that she had better leave her other sister, Charity, a message.

But this time, all that Faith heard was; ‘the number that you have dialled is unobtainable’. She sighed aloud and asked if Linda would call her a taxi.

When the black cab arrived, Linda helped Faith into the back seat. “Ring me?” She said in concern and scribbling down her personal mobile number, she handed the piece of paper to Faith. “If you need anything… ring me.”

Faith took the piece of paper. “I will…” She paused and added. “Thank you Linda.” She turned to the driver and asked to be taken to an address in Camden.

Linda stared after the cab and watched as it disappeared. “Faith, Hope and Charity?” She whispered and shaking her head in amazement recalled the words that Faith had spoken;
I am now a simple human being
- but as soon as Linda spoke into her own mind, she thought;
is that you… I mean me?

“Oh! For goodness sake,” she muttered and made her way up the stairs and into the library.