A Blue Sky Existence

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

The Room

 Charlie stared ahead. Then he looked sharply behind and back again.

     Although the door couldn’t have been much wider than an alleyway, it opened up onto a room the size of a dining hall. There were dark sofas and carpets arranged in various places, but little else. His eyes widened as he took in other ethereal figures, swathed, like Victoria, in long black cloaks.

    There weren’t as many servants of Death as he’d anticipated. When Victoria mentioned the meeting that took place to discuss his fate, Charlie had pictured a long table in a haunted house setting, teeming with hundreds of ghostly beings; here there couldn’t have been more than half a dozen.

     He only had to look at Victoria to make her explain:

   ‘Welcome to the Room, for lack of another name,’ she stated proudly. ‘It is what you might call a non-space – a miniscule plot of time and space which contains none of the latter. It is neither here nor there, neither invading the plot of land taken up by the dentists’ surgery, nor encroaching on…’

   ‘I get it, thanks,’ interrupted Charlie. ‘Or at least I think I get it. Metaphysics and that kind of stuff confuses me.’

   He cast his eyes around the Room again, unable to ignore the attention he was receiving from the other servants of Death. Beneath his cloak he felt uncomfortably mortal.

    ‘So this is the lad, then?’

   Charlie directed his gaze towards a female servant approaching him with keen fascination. She looked older than Victoria, but her brilliantly white smile and gleaming eyes conveyed a youthful character. She offered a hand tinged with that familiarly eerie glow, which he took and grimaced at - she too had ice-cold skin.

    ‘Ooh, sorry about that. Haven’t been around to shake a mortal’s hand for quite a while. Forgotten how it must feel for you. I’m Shannon, by the way.’

    Everything she said sounded cheerful and distinctly Irish.

    ‘Charlie, it is generally considered bad form to stare,’ muttered Victoria. He couldn’t help himself though: the dark bruises on Shannon’s neck, jaw and cheekbones were too striking to ignore. But, still smiling, she brushed Victoria’s comment aside.

    ‘Ah, it’s no worry. I forget about the bruises too - no mirrors in this place. I got ‘em when I died.’

    ‘Uh, I’m sorry,’ mumbled Charlie. He wouldn’t mention it, but it felt disconcerting to hear someone speak of death so lightly after everything he’d been through. His curiosity, however, was piqued.

    ‘How did it happen? That is, if you don’t mind me asking,’ he said quickly, sensing Victoria’s disapproval in the air.

    ‘Not at all. Although I do like to know a person’s name before I tell ‘em details like these.’

    ‘You mean you didn’t even tell them my name?’ said Charlie to Victoria. She blushed.

    ‘Well…I didn’t think it to be terribly important at the time,’ she replied, casting a look to the ground. ‘Do excuse me,’ she murmured hastily. Charlie turned back to Shannon.

    ‘Pounce. Charlie Pounce.’

  ‘Ooh, a fine name as ever there was. Well Charlie, after all these years I can only laugh at my own clumsiness back then. It was 1963; I was down in Queenside from Cork, visiting me mam’s side of the family, when I took a nasty tumble down the stairs. Broke my neck, and next thing I know, I’m walking away a ghost! Very odd hands you get dealt in life, don’t you think? But then…you’d know all about that, from what we’ve heard.’