A Ghost Story - Hallowe'en 2023 -
From This World to That Which is to Come
The veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest on Hallowe’en.
Only she did not know that back then.
There are also times of the month, when the veil thins further; when you’re bleeding from the space made to call in soul.
She’s in a Pret loo. A never -hot-enough Oat milk latte, cider vinegar crisps, and a hazelnut cookie shelved on the baby changing table, watch her squat, as twisted branches of urine and blood snake towards water.
A period on October 31st. A plan to meet a friend in Dalston. Cut through Bunhill Fields Burial Ground and up through Shoreditch, Hoxton, Homerton and on to meat cooked over coals.
There is a sign at the entrance of Bunhill Fields: Cyclists dismount.
A sign in place for so many years, rain blanching the black letters grey, as timed collapsed Bone Hill to BunHill.
A 500m stone path runs like a spine up the graveyard.
You must get off your bike and walk because they are alert to speed, to the whistle of wind through spokes. You must get off your bike and walk or they will feel you and come looking.
It is windy this Hallowe’en. The sign has fallen over, yellowed leaves cover it. She does not dismount. Does not get off her bike and her walk. In stead, she rides.
And so they come. To the black railings either side of the path, reach out their hands, to touch something fast, warm, living. The scent of her on their fingers.
The space inside her, a lantern moving through the darkness, and within its emptiness the chance of entrainment, a mixing, of an infusion occurring. A temporary lodging.
And as she peddles, in the time it takes for one rotation of her wheels, another’s lifetime is lived through her. Each experienced as a split second phenomena; a burst of prickling skin or a flash of nausea.
Defoe; William Blake; Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the vicissitudes of Dame Mary Page and the lives of many other unnamed and brave who lie there, all of them passing through her as she is sucked up this channel between worlds.
She cycles through and out drifting along the back streets of Shoreditch, to Dalston.
The bike is locked up. She hugs her friend. Goes to the loo.
The string is red. She pulls it out and drops it into the water. It sinks. But two clots rise, and whisping around them strands of blood form a small circle. and around those, more whisps of blood extend, touch and join.
She wipes herself, turns to drop the paper in and sees eyes staring up at her. She screams.
Then crouches down to look closer, inspect. The blood collapses, chases itself and forms new pictures: a bike, a tree, a rose, a pair of wings and then starts to recede from the surface, gathering itself into a tight ball. She reaches down to touch it.
Sarah! Sarah! Are you ok?
Sarah!? Sarah! Are you ok?