The Other Side by Marcus Sedgwick

Keith Gray's introduction:

"It's a genuine pleasure to welcome Marcus Sedgwick to the Virtual Writer in Residence project and to introduce his exclusive story The Other Side. No list of top writers for young people in the UK would be complete without the man behind My Swordhand Is Singing, Blood Red, Snow White and The Book of Dead Days - great, great novels that display a classic sense of storytelling and an almost acrobatic imagination. I can't recommend them highly enough.

Similar to our previous VWR guest authors Marcus's exclusive short story is something unique. It's a mystery story, a questioning story, an unsettling story. It's going to get you thinking... And yet another spin on the VWR theme of 'communication' - perhaps pushing the idea of communication just about as far as it can go.

Then after you've read it, get in touch and let us know if you enjoyed it as much as we did.  Tell us what you thought of the previous stories too.  And as an added bonus, why not hop across the site to the Adults' section and read The Ghosts of Heaven, Marcus's second exclusive story."

If you have thoughts to share on Marcus's stories, or anything else to do with the Virtual Writer in Residence project, get in touch at teen@scottishbooktrust.com.

The Other Side

It’s three days later and eleven in the morning when I become alive again.
It takes a long time and it’s not nice. My mind runs like a laptop in sleep, ticking over, waiting to think, but not thinking. It must be what the mind of a slug is like, or something crawling across the ocean floor.
Yes, it’s alive, but not in any way that actually matters.
I have no idea where I am.

It comes back so very, very slowly, with little flashes that are me remembering a little bit more of who I am, and then, a little bit more of what happened at the lake. It’s terrifying and I try to scream but I can’t because I’m still barely conscious, still barely alive.

Oh my holy God. Was that you? Was that really you? That’s all I can think, and then I slide away into the blackness again.

*

The next time I’m a little further out into the world and I guess that I’m in hospital, and then I think, that’s funny. Last time I was alive I was a hundred foot underwater, with my little brother, and both of us drowning.
We were stupid, well of course I know that now. But at the time we were having fun, and fun seems a very good way to forget that danger can exist. We took the boat way out onto the lake, and it was a big lake, like a sea. It had choppy water, and waves, and once the waves started lapping over the side, I suppose we started to panic a bit.
It was only then we realised how far we were from the shore, and we started to row really hard, but it was too late. When the wind came up, and the waves got bigger, and the boat started to go under, we went into the water and we were already tired.
Then Stevie went down, because he can’t swim as well as me.
He came back up, but then went down once more. He didn’t come up again.
I tucked my legs and went down to find him, and I did, but we started sinking to the bottom of the lake.
The darkness was horrible. The pressure on my ear drums. My lungs burning for air. I felt for Stevie’s arm, and I could feel that he had already stopped struggling.
Then the water was in my mouth, and I drowned too.

*

Another two days and I’m able to sit up in bed, and now it’s all come back to me, but I’ve been keeping my mouth shut while Mum and Dad and the doctors and nurses all come and fuss over me and then go again.
Mum can’t stop crying, Dad’s face looks like he hasn’t slept in days, and I suppose he hasn’t, but somehow I can’t speak. It’s not even that I don’t want to, I simply can’t, after what has happened and what I’ve seen, there are no words that I can utter than would mean anything to anyone.
After a day or two of this, they start to forget I’m there, talk in the room as if I’m not there.
‘You’re very lucky,’ the tall doctor says to my parents. ‘I know that seems hard to understand now, with your little one gone, but believe me, neither of them should have survived.’
‘Yes, doctor,’ my mum says, nodding her head but staring at the floor. ‘We know that. They told us he nearly died in the recovery room.’
The tall doctor answers her nod.
‘Yes, that’s right. In fact, it’s fair to say your son was dead. For a while, at least.’
That makes my mother’s head shoot up and stare at him.
‘What? What did you say, doctor?’
‘Technically, your son died for a while.’
‘For a while?’ Dad says, incredulous.
‘That’s right. He had no heart beat, no brain function. To put it simply, he’d gone, in every way we can measure. But he made it, that’s the main thing.’
There’s silence for a while, then Mum says in a small voice,
‘But, Stevie… What about him?’
The tall doctor is a nice man, I can see that already, but he looks slightly awkward as he answers her.
‘Well, all I can say is I’m sorry for your loss. They say that…that drowning is not as bad as people think. That it’s quite painless.’
He shouldn’t have said that.
‘That’s not true,’ I say, and then everyone’s looking at me.
‘David!’ Mum cries and rushes over to me, but I ignore her.
‘That’s not true. When you drown it hurts like hell. You call out for someone and no one can hear. You’re staring through the dark water and your eyes search frantically for someone to save you, and then they don’t. And it hurts like hell to die all alone in the dark.’
The doctor comes over, and opens his mouth. Then shuts it again.
‘But you’re right in a way,’ I tell him. ‘After you drown it gets much better.’
Now there’s absolute silence in the room, and suddenly I don’t mind talking, a lot.
‘What did you say?’ Dad asks.
‘After you die, it gets much better. It stops hurting, for one thing.’
So I tell them.
I tell them all about what happened after I drowned. I tell them about how, as I reached the bottom of the lake, the water disappeared and was replaced by a blinding white light, not just bright, but brighter, so that it filled my whole body even though my eyes were shut tight. Every atom in my body was white light, just then, for a brief moment.

Then I tell them how the light eased slightly and how I was walking along a long tunnel, with no end in sight, just walking and walking, and then there was more light at the end, and into the lightness, stepped a figure. I tell them how the figure came towards me, smiling, and then I saw it was Stevie. He held out his hand, and said my name, and then we walked into the light together.
‘I waited such a long time for you,’ Stevie said, and I didn’t understand.
‘I only came a few minutes later,’ I told him, and he smiled again like he knew everything, and a bit more besides.

Then I tell them how we walked through the whiteness and then there was something waiting for us. Someone waiting for us. I couldn’t see them, but I knew there was someone there, looking at us and waiting.
And then a word came into both our heads, at the same time. A voice.
‘Well?’
That was all it said, and then Stevie began to walk forward, but I hung back.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said to me, ‘it’s time to go.’
‘But I am afraid,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to go.’
Then our fingers parted, and he slipped off into the lightness, going ahead, where I couldn’t go.
Then I tell them how I was all alone and I was scared. I fell back into the tunnel and kept falling. I fell for ages and ages and then I was back. I was floating in the recovery room, right above my own dead body, and I hung there by the ceiling for a very long time, looking down at myself. I wondered what to do, whether to go back where I’d been with Stevie, or to come down to the table which I was lying on, and try and live again.
I looked all about me, at the room, at the nurses and the doctors, at the equipment, and then I thought, I may as well give it a try, and I came back.

I tell them all of that, and they’re silent for a long time.
At last, the doctor coughs, and sits on the bed beside me. He puts a hand on my hand and he speaks very gently, and I let him do it, because he’s a good man.
‘David, what you have been through must have seemed very real, and very frightening, but I want you to know that you’re not alone. What you’ve described is a rare thing that sometimes happens to people who nearly die, but it’s more common than people think. It happens in every hospital at least once every year. It’s called a Near Death Experience, and what you told us is a very familiar pattern. The light, the tunnel, the loved one waiting to guide you forwards. And the…presence waiting for you. These are the same things that people report, but we believe it’s just the desperate activity of the dying brain that triggers these experiences.’
‘Oh, poor thing,’ Mum says, and Dad comforts her.
‘So it’s all a hallucination?’ I ask the doctor. ‘Even looking down at myself in the recovery room?’
He smiles.
‘That’s right. Absolutely. Your brain’s experiences can seem as real as right here and now.’
I nod, then smile.
‘So tell me, doctor,’ I say, very calmly. ‘If I just dreamed it all, how do I know there’s a child’s toy sitting on top of the TV monitor that hangs from the ceiling of the recovery room?’
‘I beg your pardon…?’ the doctor says.
‘I said, there’s a toy sitting on the top of the monitor. It’s four inches from the ceiling. The ceiling is twelve feet high. How did I see that from the recovery table, given that I was unconscious? Given that I was dead.’
Once more he opens his mouth, then shuts it. He turns to a nurse, and with a flick of his wrist, he dispatches her, to find out.
As she goes, I call out, ‘It’s a red rubber octopus. A bath toy. It’s been there for ages because it’s covered in dust.’
For five full minutes, there is total silence in the room, and then the nurse returns.
She’s white in the face, and though her mouth opens and closes, she cannot speak. She holds up a dusty red octopus.
‘Mum,’ I say, ‘I forgot to say. Stevie told me to tell you something. He says he’s fine. He says he’ll wait for us.’