HERE LIES:
ALBERT WEIGNRIGHT
BELOVED HUSBAND AND FARTHER
1945-1988
WILL BE SORELY MISSED
“You too, dad,” he turned and began to walk away from the grave as the rain began to fall again. He stopped at the rusted Iron Gate and looked back towards the large tree, quickly becoming obscured by the night mist. Turning quickly and once again flicking up his collar he set off along the wet street.
For days the voices had haunted him, whispered omens in the back of his head, rumours of a dark shadowing clouding everything just and good. Tonight was no different. With the quiet street it seemed as though the voices were screaming, and then sudden realisation that they were. Richard was not the only one to hear them though. Christopher Cheve wasn’t someone many people liked, or had anything to do with for that matter. He was diagnosed clinically schizophrenic after several bouts of severe depression and from then onwards he roamed homeless shelters with nowhere to go. Apparently just another nameless face in the endless stream of human waste. As it would seem appearances never tell the full story. He was a median, just like Richard. After the death of his wife he all but gave up on life and did something no median should ever do. He left himself open to the spirits wanting to cross back to the living world. A vessel for as many souls as it could bear.
The square was deadly quiet, the neon light of the takeaway flickered but cast virtually no light upon the puddle ridden concrete. Richard looked at his watch quickly, avoiding getting it wet in the driving rain. Bang on twelve.
“Rick? Is that you?” came a voice tentatively from the dark alleyway.
“Don’t trust him!”
“I have to, he’s our friend.”
“You have to tell him what we’ve seen.”
“Yes, only he can help.”
“Be careful, Chris.”
“I still say don’t trust him!”
Richard strained to look into the dark from whence the babbled confusion of statements had come. “Chris? Don’t be afraid. It’s Richard.”
“What do you take us for? We are not afraid,” Chris strode out into the dull light of the square and looked Richard up and down. He was filthy, unshaven and wore a trench coat that looked as though it belonged in a museum.
“Yes we are!” he recoiled back into the half darkness, his greasy and sodden blonde hair flicking over his face, “we are very afraid.”
“Can I talk to Chris?” Richard asked as softly as he could, trying not to sound patronising.
Chris’s head slowly emerged from the semi-darkness into the flickering neon light. “The world is changing, Rick, no-ones content on the other side-”
“As if they were in the first place,” interrupted Chris to himself.
-“They can’t do it, Rick, they can’t…” he shook his head violently and began repeating his last two words over and over until he suddenly stopped and looked back up into the rain, “but if one could…”
Richard nodded shallowly. “Could what? Make it through to this side?” he breathed a sign of frustration with the knowledge that he wasn’t getting anywhere with him. “What are you talking about, Chris?”
“The spirit can pass un-noticed but the physical can tip the balance,” he stood up straight and looked Richard straight in the eye. “If he could…They all could…” Chris seemed to become transfixed by something and began watching the sky blankly regardless of the driving rain.
“He?” asked Richard irately. “Who? Who is He?!” his words flowed into the night and echoed in the ether. The whispered voices returned and scratched at the back of Richards head, it was garbled and chaotic but they whispered a word over and over again. A name.
Chris looked back to Richard and spoke a single word more clearly and coherently than he ever had before. “Millaian.”
As he spoke the word, the chaotic whispers ceased, apparently content that what they had been stating had finally been heard. Richard nodded shallowly and repeated the name with a dark sense of knowing. “Millaian.”
I-II – A Dark Past
“For now we see through a glass, darkly”
-Corinthians 13:12
He used to be my friend. The only one I could tell about everything I saw, everything I knew, and then it happened. He became the shell of his former self. I hid the true nature of things from Michael for his own good…He shows great interest and, dare I say promise, but not yet the appreciation that the craft deserves. To know the truth would mean a risk beyond any that I am prepared to expose him to. One day he will want to know, one day he will need to know, and on that day I will be there to give him the guidance he will surely need for what will be ahead. For now, ignorance is bliss compared to the fate of which may await him.
Richard harshly pulled his finger along assorted volumes of spiritual encyclopaedia, through The Summoning texts and to a large, age old book which he tapped violently with his index finger before ripping it from the bookcase and effectively slamming it onto the coffee table. The decade old hardback was at least three inches thick and had embossed in gold leaf down its spine ‘The History of Old London’. Richard wiped his still dripping fringe from his face and descended upon the book, pulling it open at an already marked page. His gaze flowed down the yellowing page and eventually settled upon a small sepia picture of a stately looking family. The caption simply read ‘The Millaians.’
“You,” whispered Richard to himself as he settled his finger over a specific figure in the centre of the photo. The figure stood tall and stern over the rest of the family almost as though he had some sort of menace about him. The finger slid from the picture to a name just to the side and a short paragraph below it.
Joseph Millaian
Respected among his peers and feared by the workers in his factories, Joseph was of the third generation of industry owning Millaians to come to London. He owned lucrative properties in Manchester and Liverpool, topping off his enterprise with his purchase in 1884 of a textile facility in the centre of Birmingham. Reaching London in 1886, Joseph failed in an attempted bid to take over Thomas & Co. in the countries capital. Later that year he was reported missing and later declared dead by suicide, presumably from the immense stress of business, yet to this day his body has not been recovered and it is unknown what truly happened to him.
Richard slowly stood back up, continuing to stare at the text, gritting his teeth with deep thought.
“Rich?” came a voice from the doorway.
He swung round and slammed closed the book as his did so before turning towards Michael. “It’s a little late for you isn’t it?”
“I could say the same for you,” he looked him up and down, “you’re dripping wet.”
“I realise that,” he leant flat palmed on the book as Michael began to move into the room. “Chris was…His usual self.”
“He always is,” he craned his head around Richard at the book. “What’re you reading?”
“Nothing!” Richard snapped quickly, “…Just…Some family history.”
“Alright, well-” he stood straight again and began to move back towards the door, “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
Richard nodded and waited until Michael was completely gone before releasing his grip on the book. He gazed at it again and sighed heavily. “What’s the connection?” he said to himself before sighing again and replacing the text to its appointed position.
As he retracted his hand he glanced at the clock placed firmly in the middle of the mantle before slumping down into his armchair; 1:37am. It wasn’t like things in the night were anything new to Richard, far from it. But still, every second closer it came the more his concern grew. He’d never liked to sleep at this time of year, that was a matter of fact, but no ones impervious to the will of their body and as he sat, with the whispers scratching at the back of his mind and repeating that same name over and over he began to sink into the dark sleep which forever left him vulnerable and consumed with fear.
“The night shall come?
??”
And so it did. His dreams filled with the shadows of untold figures. A deafening silence pierced through to the soul, the brightest light in the darkest of nights and then they were there, all wanting a vessel as much as the next, so close yet just out of reach. Behind the figures stood a man, seemingly possessing no desire for a vessel or to return to the mortal plane. Richard stepped forward, towards the man with the gathered shadows around him parting like water. He reached forward for the mans shoulder but before he could gain a grasp the figure turned and looked up sombrely.
“Chris?”
Sunlight washed in all about him and dissolved the darkness as quickly as it had manifested its self. He flinched and cringed his eyes as it became apparent that he was back in his own world.
“What happened last night?” came Michael’s voice from the dazzling black.
Richard partially opened his eyes and gained a baring on him. “Last night?” he squinted over to the clock that he felt he’d looked at not five minutes previously and groaned. “Nine thirty?” he sighed and shook his head whilst becoming ever more accustomed to the light.
“With Chris…” Michael took a deep breath, “I heard on the radio this morning…He’s-”
“-Dead,” he leant forward and cradled his head in his hands. “Don’t ask me how I know.”
He looked cautiously to Richard and began again. “He was found just outside Queens Square…They