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The blues and greys melted together and George was unsure if it was ice or tears.
“Ugh, I hate it here-“
He rubbed his face and groaned with mild frustration. The void didn’t answer.
You may think that this would be a very standard reaction to waking up in the morning and realising you’re in England. You would be correct in that assumption, but George wasn’t in England.
Well he was, technically. The streets resembled London well enough, the snow crusted sidewalks of Portland Row, the looming fear that if you walked down them just a little too late that you might not only face an uncomfortably high risk of ghost touch, but also just getting stabbed as well. It’s gloomy and cold and you feel like complete shit when you’re there - so England is probably the best descriptor for it.
But it wasn’t England.
You notice that in about a minute, when you’re adjusted enough to your surroundings, when it doesn’t all seem blurry and disorienting, when you’re awake enough to be aware of your first breath and you realise just how cold the air is.
It hits your lungs first, digs deep into your body, into something so out of place in this seeming nightmare and rips at your lungs, fresh and unwelcome, like cold claws. After it feels as though it has dug through every internal fibre of your being in such a brief moment as a single inhalation, you feel it all over your body, the surface skin. It tugs at the layers of flesh in icy tears, skin and life do not belong here, in these streets so parallel to humanity.
The home of the dead doesn’t normally open its door to guests.
George pushed his glasses up his nose with the palm of his hand, it did not scare him that he was on the Other Side. It didn’t even surprise him. It was more of a minor inconvenience than anything else. Something he got used to. Something he blinked in and out of throughout the day, a place that was so hauntingly familiar, that warping walls and bended realities no longer made him nauseous.
It was so similar, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that sometimes he didn’t even realise he was there. Names were still fogged up on the windows. Sometimes he still heard voices, distant and strained in the air that pierced his skin with invisible icy shards, ripping at every pore of his being until he is back home. In his bed, in his house, on his street.
There’s strewn books and loose papers on the desk that seem to trail down onto the floor, peeled sticky notes scattered amongst them with various notes of research, page numbers, references, but he hadn’t found anything. Despite pouring over every writing he could on talents and gifts, he hadn’t found anything quite like what he was experiencing.
Not just being able to see into the Other Side, but to actually be there? To stand with two feet on a floor that resembled his own, look down at hands that were calloused in the same places and fingernails that were chewed to the same length, yet know that none of this was his. It shouldn’t have even been in his ability. Every cursed vision was another plague, once more a terrible gift George had been given by no one’s volition, a body and mind that were his, and yet eyes that saw things he should not have had the ability to do.
Sometimes he saw, sometimes he heard. Sometimes he even felt - and yet - it was all such a feeble, delicate thing. His talents were fragile in nature. They were dangerous in that he could sense everything around him and yet could not do a thing. He was aware but unresponsive. It shouldn’t have been him, he knew that much. He had no special thing to offer, outside of being clever, maybe hardworking. He should not have been able to not only see the dead, but tear holes into their world and enter uninvited all because he was the misfortunate one, the one who was supposed to stay at the flat and research, the one who was not gifted or talented or capable of being loved in any special way.
It was the afternoon, and George knew that because he heard Lockwood downstairs in the kitchen talking about how he wished he’d slept longer than just the afternoon and making a general racket with the kettle and cups, which tempted George downstairs because he too wouldn’t mind tea, and would’ve preferred a longer, less interrupted sleep.
“You’re up?” Lockwood announced as George stumbled down the stairs with all the grace of a very ungraceful vague noun, “Lucy and I were just discussing-“
George didn’t pay attention to his run down on exactly what they had been discussing, although it involved some very colourful language describing their previous client from Lucy, and some greatly exaggerated diagrams drawn crudely on the Thinking Cloth from Lockwood - and for once, he wasn’t greeted with a ‘for Christ’s sake put some trousers on’, which was a welcome change, but George just felt so empty.
He felt like this all the time, as though he had lost a part of himself, unraveled a string he hadn’t tied tight enough to his wrist as he navigated the harsh labyrinth, it became worse after each unintentional visit to the Other Side. It became stronger and he became weaker, and very quickly he wasn’t going out on cases any more, because Lucy and Lockwood were scared that something was happening.
And god they were right, but they still didn’t understand a thing.
He refused to tell them. It wasn’t a terribly difficult facade to manage. They were the gifted, talented ones, and he was the researcher who stayed at the flat and read books and wrote notes and played the role of guy whose talents were always supposed to fade first - who was never supposed to see death the same way he did.
He was meant to fear it, not be numbed by it completely.
He snapped out of it when Lockwood shoved a cup of tea on the table in front of him, “Alright George? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Type two, probably,” Lucy remarked before biting into her own biscuit, in which George noticed was criminally under-dunked in her tea.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Probably just- staying up too late reading, you know?”
Lockwood gave George a pointed look, an eyebrow raised with scepticism.
George hated that look because it meant that one day he would have to tell his best friend what it was like to die, and die and die over and over again. He hated that look because Lockwood knew what it was like to live and all knew George was to die.
He smiled at Lockwood and it wasn’t returned.
“You should go upstairs and get some more sleep. Luce and I will handle tonight’s case, it’s a type one anyway.”
And he gave Lucy that look. One so different to the sceptical expression he’d given George just a moment earlier. This was charming Lockwood, this was the look that said ‘we’ll make a great team’, and he was probably right.
“I can come with you, I’ve got some notes on the site.”
“Just give us the notes and go upstairs and sleep. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I said I’m fine.”
Another look. Because of course it was always about Anthony Lockwood and his looks. And of course Lucy smiled because she always smiled like that when Lockwood was around. And George glanced down in his tea, stirred the liquid - clockwise then anti clockwise - and he tried to pretend it was true.
“Let’s give him some space-“
George wanted to outreach his hand and beg them to stay, but that would be stupid, and he wasn’t stupid.
He ended up pouring his tea down the sink because he didn’t feel like drinking any more, he didn’t have the care - maybe even the courtesy - to dispose of his tea bag properly because that was now also at the bottom of the basin, next to cups and plates that he wasn’t too tempted to actually clean. He washed out his cup out over and over, but he was sure the residue at the bottom of the mug was never forgotten, the sliver of tea stained ceramic that never left, like scars or tears from one universe to the next.
He went back upstairs to read up more on the publications on the Other Side. A desperate attempt to understand whatever may be wrong with him in papers about a world that wasn’t his. He scrawled in the margins of open books on his desk with handwriting with the inconsistencies and variation of someone writing with a rushed fear. Panic presented in a scratched cursive around print text. He slid his glasses up his nose to rest on his forehead in a mess with his blonde hair, he supported his chin on his soft hands as he read the words until they swirled together and he felt his eyes fluttering shut as he slipped into a state of sleep.
This had become a tendency, habitual studying overlapping with sleep, preventing him from attending cases - leaving him further and further behind compared to his friends. His orthodox talents were fading as he knew them - but they were also becoming something so much stronger. He felt as though he had never been more connected to the Other Side, to the dead. Even if he was stumbling in generally blind and unable to sense around him, his worlds were more a blur than ever he had experienced.
He heard the front door open followed by the heavy footsteps of combat boots. The metallic workings of keys, and his friends had left on their mission without saying goodbye.
He chewed the eraser on the top of his pencil, tiny indents and tooth shaped splinters he gnawed at with something akin to nerves. The anxious habit had stemmed from his often not being without some form of writing implement, a convenient tool for frustrated or worried fidgeting. Another imperfect thing about George Cubbins, right next to ‘able to see into the Other Side’.
It occurred to George that in the absence of no prior research in direct connection via a person between the worlds of living and dead, that he would get to be the one to write the thesis on it, his name would be the one at the top of papers and on reference lists - and maybe that wasn’t a terrible outcome, because finally George would be able to say he was worth remembering for something.
Another instance of George falling asleep at his desk and waking up in the world of the dead. He wrapped his arms around himself, because even though the frostbite caused by mere exposure to the air of the Other Side didn’t have any adverse effects to the living body once it’s actually back in the world of the living, it’s still painful, it still stings and gnaws the skin from the bone, it never gets fed the warm flesh of living souls and satiates that hunger by ripping the life from George every millisecond and handing it back once again because death by his perception is only temporary.
The passing of time felt redundant as he was caught in a state of stillness, he could not move but his heart kept beating the blood around his body and his lungs continued to fill with the painful air of the dead that tasted like smoke.
He felt words he couldn’t understand spew out of his mouth, and the void answered in the same cipher he was unable to solve, where the the words blended and swirled together just like his vision, and his smell, and his taste-
And everything was connected in the Other Side.
George had this epiphany as it felt like he was being suspended by icy claws around his neck.
There were no distinct, seperate categories for everything he felt while on the Other Side, it blended together into a condensed experience of coldness. It increased the isolating nature of the world where he was truly alone, save for this realised strange way of understanding.
He wondered whether the dead perceived things similarly, whether the living world was one massive swirl of life and light and harsh warmth that burnt, that didn’t feel like the embrace of a cold safeness, but blinded and shot like a gun pointed at the eyes.
Then he was awake, at his desk, in a house no different to the one he had just been in, even including the cold loneliness of being without his friends.
He stalked back downstairs because this was what his life had become with fewer cases, the cyclical nature of ascending and descending stairs, to get tea and have visions of a world beyond - and in between that, washing dishes and trying to decipher languages he wasn’t even sure how could be spoken.
He sat at the table stirring his tea again, pouring a small amount of milk in and mixing it until it diluted itself in the drink, blurring together.
George let the tea warm his hands until it was cooled down, then he poured it down the sink without taking a sip.
His friends were back before the sun even hinted its subtle rays in the sky, stars still danced, and Lucy went to bed while Lockwood sat down across the table from George.
At first, both of them refused to speak.
“Have a biscuit,”Lockwood didn’t request, he insisted, so George took one, “Have another.”
“But that’s breaking the Biscuit Rule!”
“I care more about my friend than I do about the Biscuit Rule. Have another.”
Neither of them broke eye contact until George very reluctantly took another.
“Do you want tea, George? I’ll make tea.”
“Well I need something to dunk my excessive amount of biscuits in.”
Lockwood didn’t even smile at the quip. It was this very rare concern that worried George, because it was real and genuine and there, but also, it was Lockwood. It was concern from someone who wasn’t really used to experiencing it - at least externally.
Soon there was a cup of tea in front of each of them.
“What’s wrong, George?”
“Do you think it’s possible for a person to be a connection to the Other Side?”
Lockwood sighed slightly and rubbed his temple, “Please let’s stay on topic.”
“It is on topic. So; do you think it’s possible?”
“I’m not sure?” And Lockwood’s concern was reaching the point of a lack of pride in being so sure of everything, which made George realise he was very concerned.
“I’ve been going to the Other Side without a gate.”
He said it the same way he spoke while he was there, where it felt like the words ripped from his throat before he even understood what they meant. But Lockwood understood perfectly well.
“That’s really dangerous-“
“Oh really? It’s an accident! I don’t know how it happens-” George dipped one of his biscuits in his tea, taking a bite, and pushing the cup forwards, slowly pouring milk in, “I noticed this- you don’t feel anything seperate there, it’s all one big blur of everything, see, if you add milk to tea-“
He stirred the milk in and the tea diluted into a creamier shade of brown.
He looked up and Lockwood was writing something on the Thinking Cloth.
“And you don’t mean to end up there? You’re like a conduit?”
“Pretty much,” George mentally added the word ‘conduit’ to the list of keywords he needed to scrape the archives for.
He and Lockwood sat in silence briefly, and once again, Lockwood was the one to break it.
“What you do matters, George. Everything matters.”
George went upstairs and didn’t clean up his cup of tea, or eat his second biscuit, because he didn’t want to be reminded that for most of his life nothing about him was special until he became a walking gate to the world of the dead.
That night George woke up in the frosted world of the Other Side, and the words spewed out as if he couldn’t control himself, but this time he put meaning to them. He understood them.
His lungs were filled with cold air but he spoke with a warmth foreign to this plane.
“Is there anything after this?”
And this time, the void answered.
“Yes.”
“Will you show me?”
And the void did not answer. George was left cold and alone but he knew one more thing about the world - and again was reminded, that all he was good for was knowing - that there was never destined to be anything special about George Cubbins.