Aria Remains
CHAPTER NINETEEN

#

’No, of course you’re not losing your mind,’ Ruby said, concentrating on not spilling the two frosted glasses of orange cordial on their tray as she manoeuvred through the French doors and onto the patio.

‘I just feel so tired all the time, so very tired,’ Aria admitted, smiling weakly as Ruby handed her one of the glasses. ‘And kind of empty, as though my life-force has been taken away from me. And the dreams…’

She shook her head as her words trailed away. Ruby, looking concerned, put the tray on the table between them, sat carefully and without pleasure on the garden chair opposite Aria’s, since the furniture was uncomfortable, the paint peeling and exposing the iron beneath, and sipped from her drink. At one time she had owned a set of cushions for them but, following celebrations for Josh’s birthday the previous year, when enough wine had been consumed to convince her that using the cushions as frisbees would be a good idea, they had been lost somewhere between their back garden and the rest of the world.

‘At least you’ve been sleeping,’ she offered, wincing as she repositioned herself. ‘I mean, it’s been so hot lately, I don’t think I’ve had a good night’s sleep in weeks.’

‘It doesn’t feel like I have been. I mean, I suppose I have slept, otherwise I wouldn’t be having all these crazy dreams, but when I wake up it’s like I haven’t rested at all, that it was night time and then, thirty seconds later, the sun is up and I’m soaked with sweat, stuck to the sheets, with all this… this stuff running through my head.’

‘There’s been a lot going on, a lot of awful, strange stuff, so I’m not surprised it’s affecting you like this.’

‘I don’t think it’s just that,’ Aria said. ‘I just don’t feel like myself anymore. It’s like the light has gone out, like all the passion I used to have has died.’ She shrugged and reached for her glass. ‘I don’t know, maybe I’m over-thinking it, or being too dramatic. It’s just that I feel as though a big part of myself has disappeared, that I’ve lost myself somehow.’

They stopped talking for a while, looking into their drinks. Ruby’s garden, long and narrow, a path running along its right edge, a pond in the centre of the lawn, was alive with the sounds and motion of late summer. Birds constantly arrived, balancing on branches and bushes, taking their turns at the several feeders that hung from the trees along either side. Butterflies twisted and danced in the warm air, bees passed occasionally, haphazardly journeying from flower to flower, while a small group of ants behind Aria’s seat scampered by the gaps in the patio slabs with ideas of rebellion whispered amongst their ranks.

‘I keep having dreams about this place,’ Aria suddenly said, still looking into her glass.

‘This place?’ Ruby repeated, glancing around the garden before watching her friend again.

’No, not this place, I mean, a place, some place I don’t know.’

‘What kind of dreams?’

Aria sat up in her seat and placed her glass back on the tray.

‘They’re very mixed up and confusing, but it’s a place that seems like it was from a really long time ago, with wooden huts and a kind of…’ She looked around the garden, searching for the words. ’Desolate. A really desolate kind of feel, like it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s like a little village from years ago, hundreds of years ago, and sometimes there are people there, dressed like they’re from the Middle Ages or something, and other times it’s just me, completely alone.’

Ruby, looking intently at Aria, nodded as she listened.

‘The other day there was a church, an old, ruined church, and then I went into one of the huts but it wasn’t a hut, it was this, like, Victorian house, and there was a couple from the fifties listening to a story on the radio. And they were being haunted, but it was me, I was the ghost. He didn’t believe her, and it was like he was going to punch her or something but…’

Her words fell away again.

‘They seem very detailed,’ Ruby said quietly. ‘I wish I could remember my dreams with as much clarity. Usually I think I’m at the docks, watching boats come in, listening to the foghorns but then I realise it’s just Josh snoring again.’

She hoped Aria might smile, might laugh as she used to, when it seemed they used to do little else but laugh. Instead she looked serious, thoughtful.

‘I dreamt I was at some docks,’ Aria said, ‘and they were talking about the plague. When was that? The plague, I mean?’

‘Oh, I’m not sure,’ Ruby admitted. ‘I want to say, like, the 1400s or so, 1500s maybe?’

‘That sounds about right,’ Aria said. ‘I mean, that seems like the time it felt, the kinds of clothes they were wearing. And they were saying the plague was coming, but I don’t know what happened after that. What does it all mean, do you think? Why am I dreaming these things?’

Ruby thought for a long moment, chewing the inside of her mouth, then taking another sip from her glass. Eventually she said, ’I don’t know they mean anything. I mean, not all dreams are, like, metaphors for something. Maybe they’re just dreams. Maybe it’s your subconscious telling you that you need a holiday, that you need to get away for a while.’

Aria nodded thoughtfully. Taking this as a positive sign, Ruby continued, ‘You’re probably burned out. You’ve been working pretty much non-stop since you started the business, and with Robert and Sam and everything… Maybe we should do it, maybe we should take a break for a while, go away for a weekend or a week or something. I mean, if you wanted to, and if you wanted me to come.’

Still nodding, Aria took a long drink from her glass and agreed.

‘You might be right, and of course I’d want you to come. What good would it be, me going there on my own, some mad woman who’s losing her mind, wandering around a place she doesn’t know? I’d probably get lost and never be seen or heard from again.’

Although she didn’t laugh, Ruby did. It was almost, just for a second, a glimpse of the old Aria, the funny, self-effacing Aria she loved so much.

‘Don’t say that,’ Ruby said, still smiling. ’But yeah, it’d be fun, and Josh would be cool. He’s still reading all these books about how to be a writer, which is weird since I hardly ever saw him read anything before, and I think you’re supposed to read actual books rather than books about how to do it since, from what I can gather, they all recommend that you’re supposed to read all kinds of different stuff. But anyway, he’d never even notice I’d gone, I don’t think. Send him a couple of photos of me in a bikini and he’d be happy for days.’

Aria smiled at last.

‘Okay, then, let’s do it,’ Ruby said. ‘But where should we go? Hang on…’

She stopped, reassessing what Aria had said.

’What do you mean, going there on your own? You mean, you already have somewhere in mind?’

Aria frowned and rubbed her eyes.

‘I think we should go to try and replace it, to replace the place.’

Having expected Aria to suggest they visit somewhere with sunshine and tourists and beaches, Ruby was taken aback at the suggestion.

‘What place? The place you’ve been dreaming about? The place that you don’t know where it is, even if it is there at all?’

‘I think everything’s been trying to tell me something, that there’s something I’m supposed to do,’ Aria said slowly, leaning forward and looking directly into Ruby’s eyes. ’I think it’s all related, and that I won’t be able to rest until I replace out what it all means. The dreams, that weird message Josh deciphered, the night I woke up and thought there was someone trying to get into the house, I think it’s all pointing to something, to somewhere, and I think it’s trying to tell me that I need to go there and that there is something I need to do.’

‘Well, okay,’ Ruby said, unconvinced. ‘But what do you think it is that you’re supposed to do?’

‘I don’t know. I just think I’ll know when I get there.’

‘And how are we going to do that?’

The more she thought about it, the less Ruby liked the idea. She wanted Aria to get away, to experience something different, a new place, an actual place, so she could recharge, so she might be able to put the miserable weirdness of the last few weeks behind her. She wasn’t at all sure that she should be going on this wild goose chase, to a place that may or may not even exist, the place in her dreams that, even if it were real, she could think of no way they would be able to replace.

‘I know you looked it up the other day and you couldn’t replace anything,’ Aria said, ‘but I really do think it’s out there somewhere, and I really do think we can replace it. That’s the place, the place I need to be. And, when I get there, I’ll know what it is I’m supposed to do.’

Knowing Aria well enough to know that, once she had an idea in her head there was little anyone could do to dissuade her of it, Ruby sighed, leaned back in her seat and took another sip of the cordial. Perhaps, she thought, as Aria also leaned back, looking around the garden at the variety of creatures that dealt with today, with these transient moments, moments that were the only ones that mattered because they held no thought or fear for the next, perhaps if they could replace this place, this Easthope, it would set Aria’s mind at rest, might allow her to return to her real life, to become the happy, wonderful person she had been before. The person from whom the very light of the sun, the vibrance of the planet shone as a thousand fires. She did suddenly seem more positive, Ruby thought, now that they had agreed, in principle at least, to search for this place that had been plaguing her dreams. Maybe, she hoped, this was what she needed after all.

Later that afternoon, as Aria walked home, she wondered just how they might begin looking for Easthope. Having spoken with Ruby about it, hearing herself give voice to the thoughts within, she was now certain about what she had told her, that everything was connected, that the deserted place she had seen was the place she was supposed to go, that it was an actual place that really existed. She considered the idea that maybe it wasn’t called Easthope anymore, that if the plague had arrived and those who were able had left, or that the abandoned church and its fallen masonry were signs that the town had decided it should relocate, then perhaps she should search for places that no longer existed even though Ruby had been unable to replace anything. She might have more success using more specific search terms. There might be some recored of it, or maybe she could begin the search differently, trying to replace old, abandoned churches or, rather more unpleasantly, scanning documentation for information about children who died near churches. How many could there be? she thought, stopping to stroke the ginger cat as it leapt from its position at the top of the fence and rubbed against her legs, purring loudly, looking at her expectantly.

As soon as she arrived home she went directly upstairs, the hoodoo of her watch bringing the computer to life as she settled in front of it. Following its unusual behaviour when the strange coded message had arrived, it now seemed to be working as it should, as it always had, with nothing out of place and no system messages or warnings about its earlier shutdown. She clicked on the browser, sat more upright and began typing her search queries.

‘English places that no longer exist’, she entered. Several pages offered answers, filled with lists of ghost towns and lost settlements. She read through some of them, scrolling through the stories of storm surges and coastal erosion, the villages abandoned during the war that were now training grounds for the army, places that were intentionally submerged, places lost to storms and one tiny place that, even at its so-called height in 1428, boasted only ten residents.

Nothing she found seemed to bear any resemblance to the place she was looking for, and so she tried another search.

‘English places wiped out by the plague.’

Again, nothing, apart from an interesting story she paused to read, concerning a small village in the Peak District that, in 1665, was subsumed by the plague and, in an effort Aria found considerably noble, decided to quarantine itself in an attempt to curtail the spread of the disease. After fourteen months, with two-thirds of the population succumbing and the village itself falling into ruin, the plague burned itself out almost as quickly as it had arrived.

Aria leaned back, stretched her shoulders and closed her eyes. Despite replaceing interest in some of what she had read, maybe this wasn’t the way she would be able to discover what she needed to know. Maybe it was something that would come to her, would be revealed to her in some mystical way.

She leaned forward again.

‘How to make yourself dream about something on particular’, she typed, shrugging her shoulders at the misspelling. She learned that writing notes about the desired dream, visualisation and chanting exercises, repeating a phrase to yourself over and over just as you are about to fall asleep, these kinds of things might help. Similarly, meditating, working out or, conversely, doing nothing at all were also said to work.

Aria put her elbows on the desk and rubbed her face. Feeling that she was getting nowhere, that nothing she had so far seen would be of any assistance to her, she stood and looked out of the window, beginning to feel hungry and wondering what she might prepare for herself. Her street was one that carried a reasonable amount of traffic during the day, being one of the main routes into the town centre from both the local hospital and a couple of outlying developments that had begun, a couple of decades before, as minor estates and had now grown into large, sprawling conurbations. Consequently, several cars and trucks passed by as she looked out, people wandered along the paths, and a group of cyclists, wearing outfits that made them look like a team in training, spun by.

And then she saw him again, approaching the junction, the petrol station behind him, the fish and chip shop ahead. Strolling along, looking to her side of the street, in no particular hurry. She pushed the net curtain further aside and sighed, watching him, wondering if she had time to make it downstairs and out of the door, to try to reach him before he vanished once again. As he passed the four large windows of the chip shop she noticed something strange; it seemed that, from her position at least, he had no reflection and then, stranger still, she realised he cast no shadow on the pavement.

Must be a trick of the light, she told herself. Maybe it’s just due to his position, where he’s walking in relation to the sun, although the elderly woman struggling by with her shopping trolley and the young mother clasping the hand of her toddler, walking along the same stretch of path, were preceded by their silhouettes. It didn’t matter, though, since there was probably some reasonable explanation and anyway, it didn’t mean anything to her right at this moment. She was more concerned with what he was doing, whether she would be able to catch up with him and talk to him.

Just as she was about to turn, to run down the stairs, she saw that he had stopped directly opposite her house and was staring at it, a quizzical expression on his face. But why? What was he looking for? Without thinking, she slid the curtain all the way across and began knocking on the window but, despite catching the attention of a few other startled passers-by, each of them looking up in confusion, he showed no interest at all, didn’t seem to have seen or heard her. Then, as she stopped knocking, hoping he might cross the road and come to her door, a passing double-decker bus momentarily blocked her view. As soon as it had gone so, too, had he.

She looked and looked, leaning against the glass to see as far as she could, up and down both sides of the road, but there was absolutely no sign of him anywhere. But, how could this even be possible? Where could he have gone? Aria let the curtain fall back across the window and sat back in her chair, trying to imagine what could have happened to him, wondering whether she had actually seen him at all or if it had been, as with so many other things of late, something that had only happened in her head.

She slumped forward, lying across her desk, her head resting in her folded arms. Beginning to lose hope again, feeling that any control over her life on which she might have had the most tenuous of holds was, once more, slipping away from her, that she was gradually becoming separated from her mind, she closed her eyes tight against the crashing thoughts that battered against her consciousness. Slowly they began to break through, found ingress amongst the fractures and splinters of her psyche, escorting conceptions of each time she had seen the mysterious man and that, rather than him being preoccupied, that he had things on his mind that were precluding him from noticing her, it might instead be that he wasn’t able to see her, that for some reason she was invisible to him.

But why would that be? How could that be?

There were only two conclusions she could reach, as she started to drift away to sleep, as the weight of her life fell upon her and pulled her away. One was that it wasn’t that he couldn’t see her, but that there was nothing to see, that she wasn’t really there. That, somehow, she was no longer a part of her own existence, that she had ceased to be alive. But then, that would mean Ruby was no longer there, or Josh, or even the ginger cat whom she liked to see and stroke and talk to so, no, that couldn’t be it. The other idea, which remained only half-formed as she fell away, was that they were on different planes, that he was a part of one world while she was contained within another, and that it was only when the veil slipped that she was able to see him.

But if we are on separate planes, perhaps at different times, how do I replace him? How do I get to where he is, so that he can help me, so I can be…