The Between

CW: Grief, mental health issues, and alcohol abuse

It was while I was trying to come to terms with my peculiarity that I met Anna.

Her father introduced us.

That may sound unusual, but not for the reason you imagine. Her father had been dead for several years by the time I met her. He stood beside her on the platform at Angel Station with the rigid posture of a military man and stared at me with such determination that I eventually found myself walking in her direction despite having no idea what I intended to say.

At first she had her back to me, her hair falling across the collar of her coat. When she turned and smiled, I forgot whatever words I had prepared.

Looking back, I realise how extraordinary that meeting was. Most people responded to my peculiarities with discomfort, amusement or hostility. Anna responded with curiosity. By the end of the evening she had bought me dinner, listened to my explanation without judgment and somehow managed to make me feel less strange than I had in years.

I loved her almost immediately.

People speak of love at first sight as though it were something sentimental. My experience suggests otherwise. It feels more like recognition. A sudden and unsettling certainty that your life has pivoted around a point you hadn't noticed before.

Anna was an artist. She saw possibility in everything. Empty walls wanted paintings. Derelict buildings wanted stories. Rainy afternoons wanted adventure. She moved through life with a confidence I envied because mine had always been shaped by things most people never experienced.

I have spent my entire life seeing the dead.

As a child I assumed everyone could. It took me years to realise that most people moved through the world entirely oblivious to the pale figures standing beside them on buses or sitting quietly at the ends of hospital beds. The dead occupy a place I call The Between. It exists alongside our reality, touching it in ways that are usually subtle and fleeting.

Most spirits simply wait.

Some watch.

A few interfere.

Human beings possess a natural barrier against them. Everyone does. I call it the door. It exists somewhere within the mind and acts as a threshold between our world and theirs. Most people never become aware of it.

Mine never worked properly.

Anna listened to all of this with fascination.

At first she treated the subject much as she treated everything else. She asked questions, challenged assumptions and laughed whenever I became too solemn in my explanations. Over time her curiosity deepened. She wanted to understand what I experienced. Eventually she wanted to experience it herself.

I refused often enough to convince myself I was being responsible, but Anna possessed a determination that could wear through stone. Besides, I loved her, and love has a way of dressing recklessness as generosity.

So I taught her.

Looking back, the mistake seems painfully obvious.

Every person's door is different. Some are little more than garden gates. Others might as well be fortress walls. Each is exactly as strong as it needs to be.

I taught Anna how to force hers open.

I taught her to open a gate with a bulldozer.

The first spirit she saw delighted her.

The second fascinated her.

Soon The Between became something we explored together, a secret landscape hidden within ordinary life. We would sit in cafés discussing the figures moving unnoticed through the crowds outside. We would walk through parks and compare observations. Sometimes we disagreed. More often we marvelled at how much of reality seemed to exist just beyond human perception.

Those months were the happiest of my life.

We talked until dawn. Watched terrible films. Planned futures that seemed limitless. Ordinary things became extraordinary simply because we experienced them together.

Then one Saturday I came home carrying takeaway and found her lying dead on the sofa.

Even now I struggle to write that sentence.

I remember the weight of the carrier bag in my hand. The warmth of the food inside it. The ridiculous satisfaction of knowing I had remembered her favourite spring rolls.

I called her name when I walked through the door.

She didn't answer.

At first I assumed she was working.

Then I saw her.

The spirits had already gathered.

They crowded the room around her with a solemn patience that reminded me of mourners arriving before a funeral. Their pale forms drifted close to her body as though drawn by something I could neither see nor understand.

I shouted at them.

I pushed through them.

I held Anna in my arms and begged her to wake up.

Later, a doctor told me she had died from an aneurysm.

I listened.

The explanation never felt sufficient.

For months afterwards I searched for her.

I called into The Between whenever the opportunity presented itself. I wandered through places where the veil seemed thin. I spoke her name more times than I can remember.

The Between was crowded with strangers.

Anna never answered.

It is difficult to explain what prolonged grief does to a person. At first it feels like pain. Afterwards it becomes geography. Entire regions of your life become organised around an absence.

I blamed myself.

I blamed myself for teaching her.

I blamed myself for opening a door that should perhaps have remained closed.

Drinking helped for a while. Then it stopped helping and became a problem in its own right. My work deteriorated. Relationships vanished. Days blurred into weeks and weeks into months. By the time I realised how much damage I had done, I was already struggling to care.

The voices returned during that period.

At first they arrived as background noise. A comment heard from another room. Someone calling my name when nobody was there. The sort of things grief allows you to dismiss.

They became harder to dismiss over time.

Eventually I sought help.

My GP listened patiently and arranged for me to see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist listened with equal patience before informing me that I was suffering from schizophrenia.

The diagnosis surprised me less than it should have.

After all, if you tell someone you speak to the dead for long enough, they eventually begin searching for alternative explanations.

Medication followed.

Hospital followed.

More medication followed.

The voices remained.

Years passed.

Somewhere along the way I clawed my way back towards a version of normality. I stopped drinking. Found somewhere to live. Established routines. Life became smaller, quieter and easier to manage.

The dead kept their distance.

The voices softened.

The grief settled into something I could carry.

Then one morning, while waiting for the kettle to boil, I smelled jasmine.

The scent caught me completely off guard.

Anna wore jasmine perfume. Not every day, but often enough that certain memories seem permanently attached to it. The fragrance lingered only briefly before fading away.

The following day it returned.

Soon it was joined by other familiar scents. Oil paint. Hair conditioner. The subtle traces of a life I knew intimately.

I told myself there were countless explanations.

Even so, I found myself listening.

The experiences grew stronger over the following weeks.

A movement glimpsed in a reflection.

The sensation of sharing a room with someone unseen.

The impression that a familiar figure had just turned a corner moments before I arrived.

None of it felt threatening.

It felt hopeful.

One evening I caught sight of Anna in the dark screen of my television.

The image appeared only briefly, yet it remained vivid in my memory long afterwards. She stood behind me with the same patient smile I remembered from years ago.

When I turned around, the room stood empty.

Hope entered my life quietly after that.

I began speaking to her when I was alone. Only a few words at first. Then longer conversations. The flat developed an atmosphere I can only describe as expectant. It felt as though something were drawing closer, gradually narrowing a distance that had once seemed impossible to cross.

Then one night I woke and found somebody sitting on the edge of my bed.

The mattress had dipped beneath their weight.

I opened my eyes.

Anna smiled at me.

Nothing about her seemed strange. She looked exactly as I remembered. The same expression. The same posture. The same warmth in her eyes.

For a long moment neither of us moved.

Then I reached for her.

She reached for me.

Our fingertips touched.

The sensation that followed is difficult to describe. Imagine carrying grief for so long that you can no longer remember who you were before it arrived. Imagine every fracture within you suddenly fitting together again.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I was sitting upright beneath fluorescent lights.

The room around me felt strangely familiar.

A plastic mattress shifted beneath my weight.

An observation window stood opposite the bed.

Somewhere beyond it came the distant sounds of a hospital ward continuing with its night-time routines.

I remained where I was for several moments, trying to understand why nothing felt unfamiliar.

Memories surfaced gradually.

Doctors asking questions.

Nurses dispensing medication.

Hours spent discussing reality with people who seemed convinced they understood it better than I did.

The recollections settled around me without resistance.

At length I rose from the bed and crossed towards the observation window.

My breath misted the glass.

The fog spread slowly across its surface.

Then it began to clear.

Anna stood behind me in the reflection.

As beautiful as the day we met.

As familiar as memory.

Her gaze rested on me for a moment before drifting elsewhere.

I followed it.

A white pill bottle sat on the bedside cabinet.

The top was open and one tablet rested beside it.

Waiting.

The ward hummed quietly around us.

I breathed out, not realising that I had been holding my breath, and the mist spread across the glass again.

Anna's features softened behind it, becoming briefly indistinct before emerging once more.

I stood, dumbly switching my gaze between between the reflection and the tablet.

The fog cleared.

And I whispered her name.