S is for Schlaf-feuer

I looked down at the couch on which I rested and saw that I had created a dent in the cushion. Suddenly I had mass. My head swam with images of the things I could do; I could touch things, pick them up, manipulate them. I was immortal (or so I guess, I mean can anyone other than James Bond die twice?) and I could do things. I could become the coolest superhero on the planet; I could be as reckless as Iron Man, and probably ten-times drunker as I assumed alcohol wouldn’t affect me). This was awesome!
Then I thought back to the way Jonathan had said it. He had sounded like he was a doctor telling me I had six weeks to live. I thought through what he must have meant: I was now visible. I could start a riot the second I left Jonathan’s house. A floating, honest-to-God spirit! They’d dump John Edwards in a second to get their hands on me. And what could I tell them? That they had secret basements full of emotion and that apart from that I had no more idea about the afterlife than them? I’m sure that wouldn’t impress anyone and it might make some try to kill me properly.
‘Can I die?’ I asked Jonathan.
‘That is a matter on which I cannot comment. I have only heard of one other realest spirit before and I know not where they are now. I shall try to contact one of their friends, though.’
Jonathan hovered above his chair and began flashing colours again as he contacted the Never-roam. He wasn’t gone long, though.
‘It’s the strangest thing but I can’t get a hold of them.’
‘Maybe they’re out.’ I replied distractedly.
‘Honey, they’re the Never-roam, remember.’ Wisp reminded me.
‘Oh yeah. Maybe …’
‘There can be no maybe. If she is uncontactable then something is very wrong. I shall try someone else.’
Jonathan flashed colours again and this time he found a spirit quickly. He seemed to be concentrating harder than before, as though he had to shout to be heard and the other voice was equally weak. I imagined radio static over their conversation.
‘I see.’ Jonathan said, slipping out of the talk. ‘I have some bad news,’ he addressed us as his colour returned to normal, ‘we believe that we have fallen victim to what the Germans call Schlaf-feuer — sleep-fire.’

R is for Realessence

I was immediately swept up in the current of the cruel liquid-air that ran through the chambers of the heart of my brother’s house. I was pushed through the chambers, rapidly experiencing joy, sorrow, anger and contentment in succession, feeling each emotion for a moment before moving on to the next. Above me I caught fleeting glances of Wisp, who was coloured a terrified sharp orange. I called out to Wisp for a report. If I had’ve kept my fingers they would have been crossed to the point of white-knuckles.
I continued to swirl for another minute without anything from Wisp. The emotions that I was going through were becoming more than just a roller coaster. I could feel something within me stretching. It was as though the very particles of my form were stretching, like those ships going through black holes in old sci-fi movies. I tried to brace myself, to hold myself together but I had no power to do so. I had no muscles, no bones, just light. Again I cried out in our peculiar way of communicating. I imagined capital letters flying from me to Wisp. I was scared — more scared than I believed possible considering I had no reason to fear death. I felt myself breaking and I did the only thing I could do; absolutely nothing.

                    *    *        *       *       *

It was some time later that I became aware of myself again. I was in Jonathan’s house but, unlike the last time I had been there, I was actually resting on the couch instead of hovering above it. I could feel the sticky velveteen; unwashed for an indeterminate amount of years. Jonathan backed away as soon as I could see him but Wisp stayed by me.
‘What happened? Did it work?’ I asked through the haze of transition.
‘You’re okay!’ Wisp replied
‘What about my brother?’
‘Heath’s better. You fixed the tear.’
‘Great! Let’s get going then. We still have to look for your family Wisp.’
‘I’m afraid you can’t do that.’ Jonathan said from a chair across the room, ‘you’ll be spotted. You’ve achieved realessence.’

Q is for Quintessence

As Wisp and I headed back to my brother’s house I felt lighter. It was a strange feeling as I hadn’t actually done anything and Jonathan’s instructions were entirely theoretical but I still felt that at least I was heading in the right direction.
At my brother’s place the house was empty. I hoped one of his mates had taken him in for the night as it would be much better for him to be out of the place until it was fixed. In the back of my mind I feared that my brother had been removed by the police or the fabled men in white coats. Inside the house evidence of the earlier disturbance littered the kitchen and loungeroom. I was finally glad to be a spirit just so I couldn’t cut my feet on the broken glass which sat like fresh snow on the tiles and carpet.
I hovered over the entrance of the basement with Wisp beside me. Both of us had been given instructions. Wisp was to stay outside and enter only after fifteen minutes. I was to drown in the quintessence until then.
Jonathan had explained to us about the quintessence. It was a variation of dark matter; that much the physicists had correct, but they did not understand its function. In fact, no one living was likely to ever understand it as it was without the realm of the breathing life. Quintessence was what filled the basement in my brother’s house. It filled the ‘heart’ in every house. It was not linked to the acceleration of the universe, but rather the excess of emotions. Jonathan explained that when you feel that you are about to burst because you are feeling an emotion so strongly — whether it be love or hate, sorrow or joy — the quintessence was the reason that you didn’t explode in feeling. It was like a sponge for feelings. Sometimes, however, it malfunctioned. This could result in anything from a person having a ‘nervous breakdown’ (Jonathan said they aren’t really nervous breakdowns) through an excess of emotion or, as had happened with my brother, the quintessence might stop taking the emotions and start giving them back.
I looked over at Wisp and Wisp looked back at me. At first Wisp had protested the plan but it had become clear that it was the only plan. I admit I could feel that tingle of fear but I was ready to try it, no matter the consequences. I broke eye contact with Wisp and dropped down into the quintessence as though it were the cold, unforgiving ocean.

P is for Pericardia

Jonathan then moved back on his chair and went into a sort of trance. His green hue gave way to shards of red, yellow, blue, and every other colour known to humanity. As Jonathan seemed to cycle through them like a radio tuning to stations some were overlapped, creating new colours like blue/yellow,  red/green and pink/orange. There were no more of Jonathan’s words coming into my head but I could hear a faint, high-pitched squeal like a modem across a quiet room. The flashing colours finally subsided and Jonathan began to control the colour changes. He appeared to be in conversation with three people: Sickly yellow, deep crimson and olive green. He rotated between these colours and his own forest green depending on who was speaking. At one stage he began to flicker between crimson and olive before his forest green returned. I figured crimson and olive were interrupting each other before Jonathan told them to take their turns.
I watched Jonathan, fascinated by his ability, as Wisp looked around the room. Clearly Wisp had seen all of this before. A few minutes later Jonathan returned to his forest green colour and the high-pitched trilling faded out.
‘Well, that was enlightening. According to the knowledgable women and men of our network you are no ordinary spirit. Recall, if you will, my explanation that you had been in the heart of the house. Well, just like a human heart has a pericardia; a sac in which the heart is protected; so too does the house heart. It appears that you have breached the pericardia of your brother’s house heart, which you shouldn’t have been able to do.’
‘But I did it too.’ Wisp cut in.
‘Yes, I asked them about that. They believe that when our friend here penetrated the protective sheath they left a hole through which you could enter.’
‘I tried to go into a nicer part of the … heart. I tried to make it better.’
‘The others were a bit confused by that too. Meredith, the crimson spirit, thought that you may have left a permanent tear in the first chamber but only a temporary one in the second.’
‘Is there a way to fix it? I want to help my brother.’
‘There is but you must understand something. Every house has these hearts, the chambers of which are called Keeping Rooms. In the Keeping Rooms all of the emotions which have been shed within the house are stored. They usually leak slowly, which is why you may sometimes get an instinctual feeling that a house is ‘happy’ or ‘sad’. You’ve opened a flood-gate. Now we’re going to have to try to close the crevasse.

O is for Organ failure

Wisp led me away and over the roofs of suburbia like a gritty magic-carpet ride. Disney never envisaged the factories and hills hoists and washing that would never be fully clean in the polluted air. I was struggling to pay attention to our journey as I couldn’t get the thought of my brother’s pain out of my head. The afterlife was starting to blow and I wished now that I had managed to find my way off the planet when I died so that I wouldn’t have had the chance to make my brother feel this bad. It had become clear to me that there were many people who had died and weren’t buzzing around the planet. If they all had’ve stayed then we would have been overrun with all of the people who had died throughout history. Why had Wisp and I stayed behind?
Abruptly Wisp pulled me down and through a hole in a red-tiled roof. The house which we had entered had clearly seen better days as the paint flaked crisply on the walls and subsidence had caused a window to shift in the wall and leave a large gap. On an old sofa lined with worn, brown velveteen sat a being like Wisp and I.
‘Wisp! How’s things. Come in, come in. Pull up a chair.’ The green spark turned to me, ‘Hi, nice to meet you. Please take a seat. My name is Jonathan Fitzmorris.’
Jonathan eagerly bid us to sit. I mused that if we had’ve had hats and coats Jonathan likely would have taken them from us and hung them up in the hall. I hadn’t actually sat since my transformation and I wasn’t entirely sure if it was possible as I seemed to be able to go through everything. I settled for hovering above a chair.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come to see me. What can I do for you?’
‘Jonathan, my friend here needs some help. She’s activated something in her brother’s house. It’s a basement that isn’t normally there.’
‘My dear,’ Jonathan replied to me, ‘I believe I can help you. I am a part of a group called Never-roam. We communicate telepathically as, you may have guessed, we don’t leave our houses. We live as though we were still human. I have heard of this phenomenon that you have described before. You were in the heart of the house. What has happened is similar to organ failure.’

N is for Never-roam

I led the way back toward the stairs to the mystery basement; the Keeping Room. I expected to feel the rush of adrenaline and a slight wave of nausea which had always accompanied fear in my living body. It was strange having the feeling of fear without the physical sensation — I thought that it seemed like I had uncovered a cheat code in life. A cheat code that let me still recognise emotion but never feel that I have to obey it. I felt, in that moment, invincible.
We hovered over the entrance to the basement. From there I could see the dimensions of the room, taking up about a sixth of the size of the house. I floated across to the area beyond that room. I looked over at Wisp.
‘I’m going to try to enter the room beyond the one which I went to before. If I’m not back in five minutes come in for me.’
‘Will you be safe?’
‘I don’t know, but I get the feeling that I activated a bad section of the basement. I hope that not all of them are bad.’
‘Okay. I’m watching the clock on the wall. Go!’
I plunged beneath the kitchen floor and into a room the same size as the first Keeping Room. Once again the wind swept me up and held me powerless, although now I was feeling happiness. No, not happiness, more like joy, contentment and bliss all in one. It was as though everything was right with the world. I hovered within this air, floating as though on a calm ocean. It was beautiful but I had to go. I didn’t want to worry Wisp after the day we’d already had.
When I got up to the kitchen Wisp was waiting, one eye on the clock.
‘Can you see Heath?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, he’s come over all calm and smiling. You did it!’
A crash came from the living room. This time it was Heath falling onto the floor, racking with sobs despite the presence of his friends.
‘It didn’t work!’ I yelled.
‘It did work, but only while you were down there.’ Wisp replied.
‘I have only one option, then.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘I have to. I will stay here.’
‘What about you? What about if someone else needs help?’
‘I got him into this and I’ll get him out.’
‘There must be another way. I have heard of a group, the Never-roam. We have to find them.’

M is for Might

Wisp turned to me as we watched John stumble back into my brother’s house.
‘So, you wanna look around some more?’
‘Not near that room.’
‘What did you see?’
‘Bad memories - not mine, but I think my brother might have been involved.’
‘So the house has a room with his memories in it?’
‘Yeah, I guess. The weirdest thing is that there is no basement in his house.’
‘Well, clearly there is. You were in it.’
‘That’s what I’m saying. There was never one before and I bet that if you asked my brother now he would tell you that there is no basement. It’s like it’s the house’s room, rather than the owners.’
‘Okay. What—‘
From inside the house there came a huge crash as a wooden chair bounced off the loungeroom wall.
‘What the hell is that?’
There was shouting as it appeared someone had gone Hulk on the place.
‘Heath, what the fuck—‘
‘Put it down! You’ll hurt someone!’
‘What the h—‘
A second chair, or perhaps the first one, liberated itself by way of crashing through the window and landing in the backyard.
Wisp and I floated back into the kitchen where Heath was standing with the kitchen table held over his head. A statuette of a man on a horse, which had sat on his table since he had moved out, was in the corner, the half of the rider was separate from the horse which was also separate from the base. Heath’s muscles bulged as a look of pure grief and outrage started out from his eyes.
He began to pull the table back, as though he would use the remaining momentum to throw it. That’s when his balance was off and that’s when Ben, his best mate, took the chance to tackle him to the ground. Heath was quickly beaten and he collapsed against the table and the wall.
‘What the hell is wrong with you, Heath?’
‘I don’t know. I was fine and then I started thinking about my sister and I was angry. I don’t even know why I was angry.’
I turned to Wisp, ‘Am I crazy to think that the Keeping Room might be involved in this?’
‘No. Not much is crazy at all when you’re dead, though.’
‘I have an idea. It’ll take a tonne of guts. And I can’t guarantee it’ll work.’
‘But it might, and that’s good enough for me.’ Wisp replied as we watched my shocked brother calm down.