Chapter One - Tinder

You know how when you wake up from a very deep sleep, it's quite a struggle? And if you find you have visitors in the dead of night, well, it can be quite disconcerting at first.

It was as I found myself midway down the stairs that I must have fully woken up, my mind no longer drifting in and out of time - a moment here, a moment there - for it was then that I suddenly remembered that I hadn't asked any guests to come.

I buttoned the jacket of my dark suit, my eyes focusing on the black of my tie, illuminated by the faint light leaking from the ajar door to the living room. The light cast a line across the dark floor of the entrance hall, flickering as if people were passing in front of the source. Muffled voices were coming from that room also. I couldn't make out their words for the noise of the wind and rain howling around the gables of the old stone house was filling the space between me and the living room. I could make out two voices. A third. How many people were in there?

Edging up to the gap in the door, I saw the light reflecting off the blackness of the window, identified its source as a torch perched on the mantelpiece, deliberately pointed at the glass of the window to maximise the light. Zipped overnight bags were piled on the floor just inside the doorway.

"I feel like we're squatters here," said a nervous voice from deep within the room.

"We're only going to be here for a few hours, Sheryl," said another female who was close to the door. "You're among friends, nobody's going to jump out at us."

I stepped over the bags, into the dark room, and it was as if I'd walked not into the front room of this old familiar home, but into a dressing room at a cheap theatre.

In the corner ahead of me, I could just make out a gangly young chap with unruly black hair wearing nothing but a tee-shirt and a towel round his waist, drying the lower part of his body. Immediately behind the door was a red haired girl standing in a sleeping bag that was held in place over her legs by her knees. She had her back to the room, fastening her black bra in place.

New smells, new sounds, new sights. New memories to blow away the old dusty ones.

"Yeah, and look at Lori," said the dark haired man. "She's made herself at home already."

"Yeah, she's got her romper-suit and everything!" added a second man, tending a small fire in the hearth. He was dressed but soaking wet, a smart leather jacket on his back. A sleeping bag was rolled out hearthrug-style behind him.

"Ha-ha," retorted the redhead - Lori? - sarcastically in the direction of the man by the fire. She pulled up her sleeping bag, holding it in place under her arms, and brushed her long wet hair from her face. She was a petite, curvy lass, not exactly slim but quite shapely nonetheless.

There was a fourth person in the room, a willowy dark haired girl in the shadows of the far corner. She to had a sleeping bag, holding it against her while fishing for the zip to unfasten it. Like the chap by the fire, she was also in wet clothes, a towel around her shoulders. The man by the fire turned his head, tried to catch her eye, to smile at her, but she wasn't looking.

"I just want to get dry," Lori grumbled, to no one in particular it seemed.

"I just want to get rat-arsed," the black haired man replied, flippantly.

Rat-arsed? What kind of colloquial language did these folk speak?

He then proceeded to turn his back on Lori, bending down to pick up some thin shorts from the floor, stripped off his towel and bared his backside at her. "But as you say, we're among friends!" he added.

Lori did little more than glance round at the view, smother a grimace - or a grin - and comment that he was "no oil painting with a face like that".

Friends? What kind of behaviour was this among friends? Different way of speaking, different way of socialising. Who knew what happened behind closed doors in any era, but this wasn't even their house!

Ignoring this show of vulgarity, I strolled forward, quietly stepping over the dusty floorboards, sure that my footing would not leave imprints. The man in the jacket stood up and stretched. A tall broadly set chap, his cropped ash blonde hair caught in the gaze of the torch.

Ash blonde and a dust layered floor.

He turned towards me, headed for the pile of overnight bags in front of Lori, passed right by me. I stopped in the path of the light, turned to see Lori fuss slightly as the man moved some of her wet clothes draped over the bags, to retrieve four cans, sealed together at the top.

He unclipped the cans one by one, leaving one by Lori. He then turned to the other man, who was now dressed in the shorts, and taking a guitar from the floor to sit cross-legged on the wooden window seat that was formed shelf-like in the window's alcove.

"We're not exactly going to get rat-arsed on this Niggle," said the man in the jacket, handing him a can, "but it's better than nothing."

"Cheers, Graham," said ... Niggle? Presumably a nickname, and appropriate too, I considered.

It was then that I realised that the torchlight was streaming right through me. I was standing between the fireplace and the window seat, and I appeared full-bodied to myself, yet I provided no obstacle to the light. The four others were casting shadows as they walked about the room, but not I.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

The girl in the shadows had unzipped the sleeping bag, reversed it, and was now holding it as a shield as she thought about changing out of her wet clothes. A pile of dry clothes were by her shoes. She was very beautiful. Young - they were all young - and glamorous. She reminded me of someone from my own memories.

"I need something to actually hang these wet clothes on," I heard Lori say.

"Get your eyes off me guitar!" came Niggle's reply.

Graham came over to the girl in the shadows, leaving the last can on the floor by her socked feet as she kicked off her shoes.

"Yeah, come on, we'd better get out of these wet things as well," he said to her. "Want a hand Sheryl?"

Before she could protest, he'd taken hold of the top of her sleeping bag, keeping it suspended at her neck level, but she didn't let go of it herself.

"You could do with another pair of hands," he added, helpfully.

Niggle started strumming a tune on his guitar, a mellow and slow little number, almost romantic in tone. Still she held on.

"Trust me," Graham asked of her, "I'm not going to embarrass you."

Graham let go of her bag, slipped off his jacket so that it fell to the floor, and pulled off his wet shirt in front of her, revealing an athletic physique. He then put his hands back up to hold her bag, arms outstretched so that she had privacy from him also.

"Right, would you hurry up now before I go all gooseflesh?!" he asked.

Sheryl shyly made eye contact with him. He grinned. A wide grin to go with his wide nose, the whites of his eyes barely visible from their recessed sockets.

She let go, bent down slightly, maintained eye contact, her eyes catlike, her chiselled high cheekbones accented by the slightest of smiles on those full lips.

Niggle's guitar playing seemed to be attuned to the scene.

Suddenly I felt a bit like a voyeur, sensing the guilt that surely went with observing the intimacy and privacy of people who thought themselves alone; or at least in the company of trusted eyes.

I turned to look at the other two in the room. The louder two. Still in her sleeping bag, Lori had shuffled over to stand in front of the window seat, to the side of Niggle. She had one arm holding the front of the bag to her breasts, her other hand busily inspecting her wet hair, with the rain splattered glass as her makeshift mirror.

Niggle, cross-legged on the seat, nudged her playfully with his bare knee a couple of times, while playing his tune. She slapped his knee away irritably after the second.

I strolled closer to them. There was a can propped beside each of them. I bent down, smelled the aroma of alcohol gently wafting from within.

Alcohol. Memories stirred.

I stood up, looked straight ahead into the black glass of the window, but there was no reflection of me. They couldn't see me, so I couldn't see me. You'll never know how disconcerting it is to be subject to the same lighting levels as everyone else, to have the same light and shade on your suit and the sides of your nose as anyone else around you, but to not have a shadow, not to block light that simply passes through you.

All I could see reflected was Sheryl and Graham at the other end of the derelict bare room.

In the little time I'd been in here with them, I'd quickly tried to judge the nature of these four. They seemed to express themselves physically, teasingly, almost sexually - but (I guessed) not quite? A very different behaviour from my day. Then there had been less time for these games.

Was it all just on the surface, like the smooth pale skin of the slim Sheryl? And like Graham, with his muscles like a ...

Like a soldier.

Old memories began resurfacing through the new ones. Suddenly my vision started to blur and grey.

No! These were new people, new memories.

I blinked, vision back to normal.

And yet, why were they here? There had to be a reason. This house ... yes, it was this house ... it did things.

"Grey's right you know; you do look like you're in a romper-suit!" Niggle confided to Lori.

"He's quick enough to dish it out," she muttered in reply, her tone dark.

Niggle ignored that, sticking to his own lines of thought. "Romping's a good idea tonight," he suggested.

"Look at him now. You know he's after something when he's being that nice," continued Lori.

"Pot, kettle, black?" Niggle taunted her, gently. The direct torchlight highlighted his stubbly chin.

Lori glared at him but he was looking at the strings of his guitar. She looked away, glared back again, still couldn't get his gaze, shrugged, and then conceded. "Maybe."

They both grinned at bit at that.

Lori pushed at his hairy leg playfully before returning to attempting to fix her drenched hairstyle.

I returned my attention to the reflection of Sheryl and Graham on the glass. The body language between them was very telling in that moment. He was obviously tempted to do the boyish thing and pull back the bag to get an eyeful, but he was playing the gentleman in the hope of delayed gratification. Rather like the torchlight that was softly touching one half of him, but not the other. And yet, in that confusion of roles there was lack of confidence.

For her part, she trusted him, but not blindly. Maybe she was testing him. Her eyes were flitting between his gaze and his arms, and maybe not just to make sure they remained steady. Despite her innocent air, there was something about her manner that suggested that this flower was nearing the time when she wanted to bloom, to step into the daylight and shine.

Young love. I remember it well. Even though it was so long ago now.

The moment passed.

"Thank you," she said kindly, taking the sleeping bag from his grasp and hugging it close around herself. "I think I can manage the rest for myself now."

She was smiling warmly at him, as if he'd passed a test.

He was grinning like the cat who got the cream, taking the signal and backing off.

It was then that I sensed it. As a ghost I had become accustomed to new abilities as well as limitations, and one ability was being able to recognise influences in this house. They were like weather fronts that weaved and flowed through the rooms from time to time. Was it simply an accident that this sensation was strong in this room now, when these youngsters were getting frisky and physical? Was it whispering at their free-will?

"Look at my hair, it's so dry," complained Lori to the entire room. That earned her a dubious look from Niggle.

Graham came over taking a swig from his can. "Go back outside and wash it then!" he told her, cockily. He grabbed Niggle's towel from the floor, where it lay on top of wet clothes, and rubbed the remaining rainwater from his torso.

"I washed it this morning, thank you very much!" retorted Lori, sharply. "Now move out the road, you're in my light."

"Ooooh, the offence!" Niggle teased her, a broad grin on his face. He looked round at Graham, saw the re-use of his towel and shook his head wearily. "You don't read your hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy, you don't!"

But the reference was lost on Graham. Lost on me too, for that matter, but that was hardly surprising.

Graham had moved to stand in front of the fire before unfastening his jeans. He was the last to dry off from what, I assume given the rain beating against the window, had been a dash through the storm for the shelter of this house. In the fire grate behind him, dry pieces of at least one wooden picture frame were sparking merrily.

Both men's eyes strayed back to Sheryl, and Lori had caught sight of her in the glass also. I focused on her reflection and saw why she was suddenly earning the room's entire attention. Wrapped in the unzipped sleeping bag, she was bending down to pull on a fresh pair of trousers, but in bending over her shapely slim body wiggled out of the back of the bag. Her bottom wrapped in white, her bare skin, soft and glowing in the pale light.

"There are folk dripping here, Sheryl," warned Lori, gently.

"Yeah, sorry," said Sheryl, absently. "I'm being a bit of a wet blanket tonight."

"I meant drooling," Lori clarified, glaring at the boys. "And a bit of respect from you two wouldn't go amiss."

Suddenly realising, Sheryl whipped her shield once more around her, sitting down to zip the bag around her. Her face blushed as scarlet as the lining of her sleeping bag.

"Hmm, romping never looked so inviting," Niggle suggested to Graham as he climbed off the window's seat and pulled up a sleeping bag from the floor.

Graham wolf whistled and, clearly soaked to the skin by the state of his shorts, he shook out the hearthrug sleeping bag in front of him, attempting to throw his legs into the cushioned material and stand at the same time, overbalancing and pitching forward onto the top of it instead.

Of course, from where we, Lori, Niggle and I, were standing, we had to nearly look into the torchlight directly to see him, so this must have saved some of his blushes; or at least stopped us from seeing them.

"Go Graham, go!" encouraged Lori, looking round with scandalised glee at the view she thought she saw.

In his bag, Niggle turned towards Lori, positioning himself within the bag as if he were in the driving seat of a car. There was a grin on his roguish face, and a devilish look passed between the boys.

"Oh-oh," Lori warned herself. "Sheryl, they're going to chase us!" she shrieked, before bouncing away to the centre of the room, Niggle in bouncing pursuit.

It was odd, standing there unseen in the middle as Sheryl and Lori passed by me, Graham chasing the former, Niggle the latter.

Graham had taken his shorts off in his bag and stuck them on his head. Bit of an idiot thing to do but it seemed to amuse the girls.

"I'm getting fully dressed again in here," Sheryl tried to warn him, though there was laughter in her voice.

"Oh now come on!" cried Graham merrily. "You're going to have to prove a statement like that!"

Sheryl suddenly toppled over, falling neatly onto the pile of bags where Lori's wet clothes were laid out to dry. She turned round in time to find Graham topple towards her, his hands letting go of his bag so that he could cushion his fall with his arms, and save squashing Sheryl. The bag slipping to his chest, he lay on top of her, his grinning face suddenly close to hers. She giggled, wriggled upwards a bit in a feeble attempt at escape, her white bra filled out by her shapely breasts. Then his shorts slipped off his head, landing beside her face, and she giggled some more.

Time seemed to slow down. A sexy game suddenly got a little more serious. Commitment of feelings loomed. Their faces got closer still. Breathing on each other. Would they kiss?

***

Around the dusty old building, I could sense the house momentarily coming to life. Passion is a powerful trigger for all sorts of things. I could hear the roar of time, as the very walls recognised patterns in what was happening.

But I refused to let my mind dwell on any such patterns between the present and the past. I would not be motivated by self-pity, to indulge in projecting memories of the past - my past - onto these young folk.

After all, since walking into this room, among these young folk, I'd felt like an immigrant in a strange land. The four seemed to speak a different language than that of my day. Time is like a speeding train, puffing into the far distance, leaving me at the platform.

Nonetheless, I could feel forces around me preparing themselves, as if they were just waking too. These visitors couldn't see me - yet. But I suspected they would, when the house was ready.

My mind drifted for a second or two. I could sense something upstairs. The large bare window to the front bedroom. The shadowy spectre of a young woman drew back a curtain, her slender figure dressed in a lavender dress with lace trimmings, and her long hair held up in a clasp. Shirley. A lump came into my throat. Do not feel self pity, I told myself, do not let it feed on you.

***

"You're lying on all my wet clothes!" shrieked Lori.

Graham hesitated, millimetres from Sheryl's lips.

Intimidated, he rolled off Sheryl, holding his sleeping bag up and chivalrously helping her to stand also. However, it was obvious from their eyes that both regretted the unfulfilled passing of that moment.

Regret; such a powerful emotion. It wells up inside you, turning misery into anguish, anguish into grief. The loss eats away at you, makes you wish for the impossible; to go back and make things different. As it is with love lost, so it is with life lost. I could identify with the emotion of regret. Very much.

And something else changed in the room then also. That influence like a weather front retreated slightly, abandoning the four to the consequences of their actions.

"Well, you didn't need to get up so fast on my account," chided Lori. "Christ, I thought you'd take advantage and finally kiss the girl."

Graham was instantly riled. "Shut your mouth, alright? I told you that in confidence!"

Niggle grabbed Lori by the sleeping bag and turned her around so her back was to the two. "When Grey needs another mother than the one he's got, he'll shout for you Lori, okay?" he said none too nicely to her.

"What is this?" asked Sheryl, of Lori.

"He's a mother's boy all over, that man," Lori told Niggle, swinging her head in Graham's direction, before answering Sheryl. "He's got the hots for you. Told me so a couple of Saturday nights ago on one of the rare occasions when he wasn't driving." Her tone was scathing in the extreme.

Reading between the lines I assume if he hadn't been driving, he'd been drinking.

"Lori!" Niggle bawled loudly in Lori's face. Lori paid him no heed and swatted his face away as if he were a fly.

Graham rounded on her angrily. "And that's the last time you'll be getting a lift home from me."

No-one seemed to notice that Sheryl was quite taken with the compliment that Lori had told her about.

"Well, there wasn't much point in getting a lift with you tonight, was there?" Lori savaged, red hair flashing in the stream of light. "Your fast car conked out before we even got there and left us here in the middle of bloody no-where."

Niggle grabbed her by the sides of her bag. "You don't need a car, you've got a motor for a mouth! Shut your gob!" he shouted at her, before pointing vaguely in Graham's direction. "He'll not speak to you for weeks now."

Lori turned to Graham witheringly. "And don't go in the huff," she said, disdainfully.

"Yeah, don't go in The huff," Niggle told Graham, adding with slightly wearisome wit, "there's only one huff," he nodded in Lori's direction, "and she'll want a turn sooner or later!"

Lori opened her mouth as if to protest at the insult and then closed her mouth again, huffily. Perhaps she couldn't deny the suggestion.

"You don't fancy giving us a song Niggle, do you?" Sheryl suggested, in an effort to help him defuse the situation.

"With me guitar?"

Lori headed for the mantelpiece. "No, with your fucking toenails, what do you think? Where's my lighter? I need a fag."

While she found what she was looking for, Niggle and Graham exchanged short-tempered looks towards Lori behind her back.

"Yeah, good idea Sheryl," said Niggle.

In a black mood, Graham bent down by his clothes bag in search of something to put on. Sheryl watched on sympathetically. Meanwhile, Niggle retrieved his guitar from the window seat before coming back to join the other two who'd moved to the centre of the room, leaving Lori out of the threesome to fume on her cigarette by the fireplace.

***

As Niggle's guitar playing drifted on through the next five or ten minutes, so my mind drifted with it. I didn't recognise any of the songs Niggle sang, but the tempo of some of them reminded me of the beat of a clock. And not just any old clock. The regular, repetitive return to a particular note; a key that brought to my mind the clock on the mantelpiece of an upstairs back-facing bedroom. The clock hadn't been wound up for decades of course, but the guitar playing reminded me of its strike nonetheless. When it marked time. In the past. In my time.

Lori must have come back to the fold, for the next time I paid any heed, the four were together, all settled on the floor in their bags, ready for sleep. Niggle was performing another of his fine guitar solos, this one slower and more gentle.

I looked about the walls of the room, looking about for that invisible force that seemed to inhabit this house. If indeed it was separate from the house. It always only needed three. But this time, there was a fourth.

Niggle finished his song and there was an appreciative pause from others resting in their bags, girls and boys now slightly separated. Lori was wearing an oversized tee-shirt that could easily be one of Niggle's, and Sheryl looked as if she'd re-dressed.

Although the rain still splattered on the bare windowpanes, the room had a warm glow from the small fire still flickering in the grate. The torch was now off, by Graham's side, and all felt calm.

"Hmm, that's nice and relaxing," sighed Lori, her voice sounding sleepy. "You could serenade us off to sleep like that. And that's not a criticism."

Sheryl agreed. "You know sometimes I think your nickname sums you up, Niggle. But other times, like just there -"

Niggle interrupted her. "Hey, are you girls not going to strip down more than that?!"

Sheryl raised her eyes heavenwards, no longer feeling like finishing her compliment.

Lori scowled at Niggle. "Away and behave yourself!" she grumbled.

"I'm disappointed! Are you not disappointed, Grey?"

"Gutted."

Lori turned round to glare at Niggle. "Well, you know what you can do with your disappointment - shove it where the sun don't shine!"

Graham laughed. "You're the very model of femininity, you know that Lori?"

Lori's tone became self-mocking. "I'm posh, don't you know?!"

While she didn't catch his eye, Lori nonetheless looked relieved that she and Graham were talking again. I guess neither would have apologised for the earlier outburst. Lori would probably forget it soon after, but I doubted if Graham was the forgive and forget type. Sheryl was also looking at the big blonde lad, her eyes travelling over his white vest, his arms behind his head. The man was a fool not to notice.

"I don't know how you guys can manage," she muttered. "It's freezing in here."

Graham finally looked round at her, his tone exaggerated. "Well, if you want me to help ..."

Niggle laughed at that. Doubtless the suggestion had been made for his mate's amusement anyway.

Sheryl retreated into her bag.

"Let's get some sleep Lori," said Sheryl. "If you boys are going to talk all night, do us a favour and keep it down, okay?"

Graham and Niggle burst out laughing. Lori was also laughing quietly, though with her face turned from her friend, so as not to further embarrass her.

"What?" continued Sheryl. Then she realised her double entrée and rolled over onto her side to sleep. "Oh, you lot are incorrigible!"

Sheryl closed her eyes, facing the darkness.

Graham looked at her back, and his smile faltered slightly. Maybe he regretted making fun of her just there.

As they quietened into a sleepy silence a deep howling persisted to invade the room around them, seeming to grow louder in the absence of any other sound.

"Is that the wind in the chimney causing that noise?" asked Lori, as if one of the others could stop it if they'd only try.

"Yeah. It would fucking blow the hair off a wooden leg out there tonight!"

For Niggle, I thought that was quite funny, but the others were either too tired or too used to his puns to react.

I decided to take my leave of them at that point, and headed for the door, still standing ajar from the frame where it was pushed over as far as the floorboards would allow.

Time passed; I had no method of measuring its progress, but the rain stopped after a while, and moonlight shone now and then through the bare rooms of the upper floor.

The house was in silence. The four would have been deep in sleep by now. All at rest. Almost. That weather front was still present. I could feel it, tingling at the edges of my senses. Something was happening. I could feel it building up around me, whipping around me. It couldn't affect me of course, not in my current existence. Not unless ...

The force buffeted around me, imprecise and shapeless, as if it was driven by time running backwards, where the effect proceeded the cause.

"No," I muttered, looking over the banister from the landing, seeing the photos on the wall, momentarily seeing a wave of dust lifting from my surroundings. There is nothing and no-one there, but the tension was electrifying.

Then, powerful and loud, a gunshot rang out around me.

Next: Chapter Two