forcefulness was for his own good.
“Ahh, Richard!” an attendant called, waving him over. “Haven’t seen you here for quite the long while,” he took Richards hand, shaking it hard, promptly moving on to Michael, “and is this the lad you’ve told me so much about?”
Richard croaked and swallowed awkwardly. “Yes…”
“I have no idea why you’ve never brought him in before. He reminds me of my lad,” the elderly attendant seemed to reminisce from seeing Michael, momentarily drifting off. “Got kids of his own now, he has.”
Richard smiled half heartedly. “Well, we’re here to do some nineteenth century research. On a particular individual, in fact,” he breathed heavily, “Joseph Millaian.”
The attendant squinted and scratched his balding head. “Millaian, you say? Name sounds familiar but for the life of me I don’t know where from,” he thought some more before cheerfully looking up again and turning to his computer. “Oh well, it’ll come back to me. For now though we’ll look him up, shall we?” he briefly glanced at Richard again with a large grin across his face. “Wonderful things these computers, all I do is type in the name here, see?” he pressed each button firmly with a single finger and waited for a second. “Ahh, there we go. It gives you a list of all the books he would’ve been in,” he printed a copy of the reading list and handed it to Richard who nodded and smiled again.
The list had four primary titles, all local history books, with a number of censuses and other miscellaneous documents listed beneath. At the very bottom, marked in red as checked out, was a single title; ‘Vessel’ by Christophe Guillaume. It had a much later date of publication than its counterparts and was not a local history book but was simply categorized under non-fiction. Richard folded the slip of paper and slid it neatly into a side pocket before turning to Michael reasonably cheerfully. “Well, we’d better get looking then.”
Richard was never happier then when he was around books; it was partly why almost every wall of his house was lined with volume after volume of them. Of course it was the only thing that had ever comforted him as a child. Retreating into a world of words and dreams kept the voices away and the world from driving him to them.
Hours passed. As they did, each of the four texts found themselves open on a narrow plywood table with Richard gazing over them intently, Michael idly flicking through the pages as each was tossed aside, and for all his effort there was nothing. Nothing more than the life and achievements of a Victorian entrepreneur. There was barely even anything on his disappearance, which intrigued Richard more than any of his life's work. He pushed back from the table and arched his back, realising how long he had been lent over the book. “This is useless.”
“What are we actually looking for?” asked Michael, looking up from a page, “we’ve been at this for hours and you’ve still got me in the dark.”
“Anything…” he rubbed his face and run his hands through his hair with a sigh, “anything at all,” as he spoke the attendant emerged from behind a pillar, grasping a small, scruffy looking notebook. He shuffled over to the table, prompting Michael to check his watch.
“I remembered,” he exclaimed happily, waving a free finger loosely, “I was sure I had heard that name before so I went searching in the achieves and found this,” he produced the notebook and handed it to Richard. “I’m not sure what it is, it’s been down there for decades, I think. I can’t read French but that name just stuck in my head you know.”
Richard picked through the pages gently flicking past paragraphs of hand written text and strange diagrams before slamming it shut in one hand and staring at the cover which had a single word scrawled across it ‘Navire.’ “French…” he reached into his pocket and pulled the slip of paper. Unfolding it he looked at the single absent book and then pointed it out to the attendant. “Do you remember who took this out?”
“I think so…” he thought for a second, “yes…Now I remember. He didn’t have a membership, just took it on short loan. Small man he was, about the same age as you,” he waved his finger at Richard once again. “Untidy looking sort, though, very unsure of himself…Oh and that trench coat-”
Richard looked up quickly. “It wasn’t him,” he mumbled after a few seconds, “he didn’t know I already knew that name,” he turned to Michael abruptly, his eyes widening. “Navire…”
“Vessel,” finished Michael, pleased he might have finally found a use for that French A-Level.
The attendant looked between the two of them and stepped back slightly. “I think you should take that…” he glanced cautiously at the notebook, “you’ll probably understand it a lot better than me.”
Richard looked back to the notebook and gripped the leather cover tightly as Michael thanked the attendant. He loosened his grip and run a hand softly across it. “It was him,” he spoke quietly and acted as if he’d much rather be somewhere else, “in my trance. It was this…Millaian. He’s not what these books say he was,” he tapped the closest open book firmly with the notebook before withdrawing it close to him, “not anymore. He’s changed, corrupted somehow. But it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard of.”
“You said it wasn’t him,” Michael ventured, “who wasn’t?”
Richard exhaled heavily, finally conceding that there were some things he couldn’t keep to himself. “Chris, the night I went to see him he told me about Millaian but that wasn’t him. I saw him again in my trance…Right before that bastard took him,” he clenched his free fist. “It was Millaian. Chris, though, he was like I remember him, you see he’s never always been like you knew him. Once upon a time he was my best friend,” his fist was unclenched and a small smile creped onto his lips but was quickly done away with as he realised he was straying off topic, “that’s another story, though. It was like he’d been in the border world for days and I think has been. He warned me about him again and was surprised when I knew that name.”
“How is that-?” he paused for a second, “possession? Maybe he wasn’t in there at all. He was a schizophrenic after all; maybe he could have been dead for days and it was spirits inhabiting his body all along,” he glanced at the book. “A vessel.”
The smile returned to Richards’s lips as he began to wonder why he had never let him in on anything before. “You’re smart kid, I’ll give you that,” he slipped the notebook into one of his many concealed pockets and was about to lead to the door but turned back to Michael instead. “What’s the next move then?”
He thought and cautiously twitched his mouth, debating whether what he was about to say was the correct answer. “Try and get to see the body? That could tell us a lot I guess?”
Richard smiled once more. “Very smart.”
I-III – VI of I
“Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him”
-Ecclesiasticus 9:10
His lifeless body wasn’t something I particularly took pleasure in seeing, although, unbeknown to me I already had. Why I hadn’t seen it already I don’t know but his body was empty already when I had met him that night. Without the original soul the host will die within a matter of days, no matter how many parasites were trying to maintain it. There was something more, Chris was a bigger part of all of this than I thought and seeing him one more time may be the only way to know how. Getting to see him, on the other hand, could prove to be more than a little testing.
The day was getting on; dusk was already beginning to haze over the horizon and the sun becoming orange in the low sky.
Richard walked slowly to the hospital entrance and looked up at the building, shaking his head and then looked to Michael who was following at a distance. “People die here…” he took a step back away from the hospital, “not good for me.”
“You can feel them, can’t you? Everyone who’s crossing over in there?” said Michael raising his voice with Richard moving ever further away.
He placed a hand firmly on a glass pane of a swing door and pushed it open harshly. “Oh yes,” he followed the wi
de swing with a wide stride into a place where nothing was real to him. The recently dead roamed the place, waiting for their time to move on, filling the silence of life with the chorus of death. Subtle but near unbearable to those who could hear it. “Getting to see him won’t be a piece of cake you do realise?” he stopped in the almost completely empty waiting room, where the receptionist sat slowly punching at her keyboard hidden under the desk and a lone man waited quietly, presumably for an appointment.
Michael hurried through the doors; trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible. “Can’t you just go into your trance thing and go in without anyone seeing you?” he whispered loudly.
“No,” Richard snapped, “my body still has a physical presence in this world. It’s not like it makes me invisible or anything,” he attempted not to sound patronising but achieved little success. “Anyway, I’d not do that in here even if it did. They’d tear me apart,” he began to walk towards a set of doors leading into the main hospital, as he did, giving Michael a deliberate dark look and smiling to himself with the amount of fear he had been able to strike into his heart with that little effort. He had just about reached the doors when the receptionist jumped up from her chair and leaned over the desk.
“Sir, I’m