Hello down there.
It’s me; I’m back from a short trip to a dusty hot island. Apologies for the last blog entry. That was the dark spirit that hides in the priest hole. I have no idea how he managed to do it but I am fascinated by his story. He has never spoken to any of us, despite Emily and me trying (as you probably realise from his ranting). A very old soul in pain. There is little we can do to help. And as for the danger approaching, all I can do is watch. Miserable bugger though isn’t he? Mindyou,if I had helped to kill off most of my family and brutally traumatise my only friend, I suppose wouldn’t be in the best of moods. Plus he committed suicide.
We have only had a handful of suicides come through here; normally hanging, occasionally blood loss and a few that have taken to the nearest pond. Some have asked; “Is this heaven?” a few; “Is this hell?” and others are a little befuddled. Their painful human existence is over but their stay here is extended. It’s their fault. We call it thinking time. They get centuries of it. Punishment for a life unlived.
Lizard power
You may wonder who made these rules. As I have said before, they are not written but told like fables around our huge community. When someone moves on they never return to tell the story. I like to believe we get another go, another chance at life but Emily thinks we are gleaning knowledge to take elsewhere, to be put to good use. A higher intelligence has to be involved somewhere, I suppose. One youngster that passed by a while back, talked on and on about Aliens, Star people and life on other planets. Some upstairs believe we are ruled by a band of giant lizards. When the Captain heard this he laughed for days but I think they may have something. Not the lizards necessarily but I have seen unexplained things in the sky and always put this down to my lack of modern technological knowledge, rather than ships from other worlds. We will know one day…
Bricks and stones
I went travelling, as you know, leaving the Hall to bask in late summer sunshine. Its bricks were handmade in the seventeenth century and enjoy the heat on their red hide. The garden reveals its true beauty and windows have been crowbarred open to allow the sweet scent of the season to perfume the Hall’s guts.
I followed the big dog to the rocky island near the other side of the world. I’m getting better at moving through space and time; I no longer feel so sick or dizzy and I can hold myself together better. So I am ready to explore this planet a little more.
Life there is different to Anlaby; the traffic quieter, the views bigger and the population more content with what they have. The landscape is bare; black rocks and stones with bubbles of green growth and trees that only grow out of the tops of their trunks. Oh, and I mustn’t forget the huge cockroaches, what creatures they are. The upstairs people there communicate differently too; they are noisier and sing and shout more. Their language is guttural and quite difficult to understand. I rather like them.
I also rather like the girl, the dog’s mistress. Her name is Loulou (I have mentioned her before) and something about her interests me. She is, I believe, what we used to call a tomboy but the learned traditions of girlhood hang around her. In order to blend in with her sex, makeup is bought and painted, mirrors gazed into and fashion observed. I do get the feeling that this doesn’t sit well with her; these rituals are a struggle. She is happier running on the mountains and throwing herself into the sea. And I sense she feels me when I watch her. She stares unknowingly, directly at me, for minutes at a time. The dog is attempting to contact her but so far, to no avail. It is a dog after all and the girl is young.
I’ll go back to see her and her eccentric family soon. For some reason it makes me feel lighter and maybe, happier when I am around her, not the sort of emotions I am used to. I told Emily this and she laughed and said I have fallen in love. Gadzooks, me in love with an earth walker? How damned ridiculous…