A Blue Sky Existence

Chapter Eleven

 Chapter Eleven

 Breakthrough

 A few days passed without Charlie encountering her again. Victoria certainly kept him busy every hour of the day with duties: he was improving on his soul collection, although entering hospitals still put him ill at ease.

     He also couldn’t help but shiver with revulsion each time he passed through an elderly person, coming into contact with their wrinkled, cold skin, and their clothes, which uniformly smelt of disinfectant and fabric softener.

   Then there were other training tasks, demanding more patience than rolling a pencil off a table. While Charlie thought being able to walk through a relatively thick door was an accomplishment, Victoria wasn’t satisfied until she had him doing laps, for ten minutes at a time, passing back and forth through the solid, varnished front door of the church. Had Charlie retained his ability to grow breathless and sweaty from this kind of exercise, he would have quitted soon after having begun. But now, he had to push through, his heart rate staying calm and neutral but his interest dwindling.

    ‘Do you know how bored I am?’ he’d whine to Victoria, who could remain stoic and statuesque on the doorstep for lengthy periods of time.

     ‘Do you know that your ennui has very little relevance here?’ she’d reply.

    Still, he improved on what he liked to call his “ghosting”. It took his mind off Etty, in any case. Now that his need for sleep was fading, there was less room for lonely hours in the dark spent dwelling on the kitchen episode. Although he’d never admit it, he felt liberated, consoled, and strangely… healthier for all this distraction.

    On one particularly stifling afternoon, Victoria suggested that Charlie ought to pick up where he left off in the cemetery, listening out for elusive and otherworldly voices. Feeling more confident in his abilities, he agreed, actually relishing the opportunity to be somewhere other than the perpetually dark Room and dispiriting hospital wards. To be able to sit in the fresh, dry grass, and reflect - what a welcome change.

    Charlie was disappointed, however, to learn that his session couldn’t be carried out at St. John’s.

   ‘There is a wedding taking place,’ said Victoria, sitting next to him on one of the sofas. ‘And it will undoubtedly be drawn out over several hours, a wait for which I have neither the time nor the patience.’

    ‘So are we doing it tomorrow, then?’

   ‘Oh, no. No time like the present, as goes the saying. The second most convenient location would be St. Luke’s church in Eastside. We shall go there now.’

    ‘Alright then, if you insist.’

    Charlie’s only recollection of having been to Eastside was during a geography trip three years earlier, where they were split into teams and sent out into the open fields, with the less than exciting task of measuring blades of grass and recording their lengths on a clipboard. That was back when Etty still wore her hair in bunches, when Charlie still had braces, and when Brody hadn’t yet discovered the other meaning of the word “weed”.

   It felt strange to rush after Victoria and arrive at the edge of the hamlet in under ten minutes, suddenly seeing the scattered cottages, pub and church anew. As the two Grims wandered wordlessly through the long grass towards St. Luke’s, Charlie watched a strayed cauliflower sheep. Perhaps his imagination was playing up, but there was something unnerving about its gaze. Did it sense he and Victoria were there? He was tempted to stop, but the sheep appeared to lose interest and began munching on some grass. Charlie shook his head.