The Last Handful of Clover - Book 2: Gifts Both Light and Dark

2.51 Lake of Gold

June 14, 11:08 am

High in the clock tower of the City and County building, Tuilla prepared Richard to face his destiny.

For close to an hour after Billy left, Richard peppered Tuilla with questions. He wanted to know why he had been chosen to come back, when the vast majority of the dead did not. He wanted to know what had created the rift they called the Hereafter, and whether it was the only such rift that existed. If not, where were the others? If it was, then why? Why this place among all others? And why couldn't they leave? Why was her dead husband so pissed off at this city, and how did he get the power to be so destructive? Why was Richard uniquely the one that she believed could fight him?

The questions went on and on, and the answers from the old woman were so unsatisfactory that Richard felt his frustration with her growing by the minute. He soon realized that she simply didn't know the answers to most of the things that he asked. And the few times he sensed that she knew, she seemed unwilling to give him more than an evasive, cursory answer.

And yet, she did not shut him down. She clearly wanted him to get it all out of his system, and only when he ran out of questions did she smile and ask, "Can we begin now?"

He had to resist the impulse to snap at her. But he also felt so exhausted mentally and emotionally from the failed interrogation, that the idea of letting her guide whatever was supposed to happen next sounded very attractive.

"Fine," he sighed. "What do you want me to do?"

Richard was sitting on a bench at the edge of the clock tower's observation deck—one where tourists could rest after climbing all those steps. Tuilla now knelt in front of him, and just looking at her made Richard's tense body relax. Her eyes were as dark as pools of India ink, and as he gazed into them, his peripheral vision narrowed to where those eyes were all that he could see.

"Concentrate on your breathing," she said. "Feel where you can most easily feel the breath going in and out of your body, and concentrate on that spot."

"That would be fine and dandy, but as you know, I don't have a body, and I don't have breath."

"How do you know you don't?"

"Well, maybe because I'm dead?"

Richard realized he was just being argumentative for argument's sake, but he couldn't stop himself. He also couldn't look away from Tuilla's dark eyes.

"Billy said he thinks our bodies are just an illusion our minds have created," he said, "and I think he's right."

"Put your hand up to your face," Tuilla said, "and blow on it. Now, do you feel that?"

"Yeah, I feel it, but it's got to be just part of the illusion. I'm not really here. At least, not physically. Nobody can see me, and nothing I touch moves. I can't believe this is really a body. I can't believe these are clothes. And I can't believe I'm really breathing."

"Despite the evidence to the contrary, you mean?"

"That's right," he said, smirking, "despite the evidence to the contrary."

"That's a pretty strange conclusion to come to, for a man as logical as you, isn't it?"

Richard felt himself shrug. Now I really am just being a shit, he thought.

"You've told me you can feel your breath on your hand. When you touch your face, it feels just the like the face you touched when you were alive. Yes?"

"Yes, but that doesn't mean it's real. This whole thing, this whole illusion that we're here... It simply can't be true. We're dead. We're ghosts. And no matter how real our bodies seem, it can't be anything but an illusion."