Greywalker - Kat Richardson [20]
I glanced from one to the other. “That’s exactly it.”
Danziger picked up a book and began flipping the pages with a swift finger.
Mara carried on. “You’ve talked to a creature in the mist, been pushed on by one, but have you pushed anything around yet? Pushed the mist aside or away from you?”
“No.”
“You have no control over the coming and going?”
“Not really.”
“And all of this has been growing more frequent and intense since you woke in the hospital?”
“That’s why I went to Dr. Skelleher. I thought there was something wrong. He says there isn’t.”
She sat back. “It’s not wrong. It’s just quite rare and hardly what they’re teaching in medical schools these days.”
I clenched eyes and fists. “What is it, damn it?”
Danziger had been running his finger down the pages as she questioned me. Now he paused and answered, “It’s the Grey.”
“What the hell is that?”
He pointed at my hands. “Don’t squeeze so hard on the glass. They really hurt when they break.”
I put the glass down with exaggerated care and glared at him. I’d have started screaming if someone else hadn’t beaten me to it.
“Oh, God. The baby.” Danziger pulled a baby monitor from his chest pocket. “We’d better go downstairs and continue where Brian can join in.”
Shaking my head, I trailed behind Mara Danziger and the flickering shape of Albert. Ben brought up the rear, peeling away at the landing as Mara and I continued down the stairs.
“Are you confused yet?” she asked.
“Frustrated. Neither of you has answered my question.”
“No, we haven’t, have we. The why is, you’re a Greywalker. Which means exactly nothing to you, yet.”
“Not a thing.”
“Stay for dinner and I’ll try to explain while I’m cooking. Ben’ll be right down, I’m sure, to help out.”
SEVEN
I wasn’t so sure this was wise, but I followed as Mara led me into the kitchen and began organizing dinner preparations. Albert shimmered in over her shoulder as she talked. “There’s a bit of a place between our world and the next. That’s what Ben calls the Grey.”
Ben Danziger walked in, carrying a black-haired toddler who was gnawing on the head of a large Russian nesting doll. “Are we ready to talk about Grey stuff now?” he asked.
“We’d started on it,” Mara replied.
“Aha! I have visual aids to make this easier. If I can just get them away from Brian.” Ben put the baby down and wrestled the doll from him. “OK. First, you have to have an overview. Matter, as we know it, is simply a state of energy. Particle physics and so on. It’s all just energetic states and interactions. When you strip out the fancy terms, many philosophical and religious beliefs come down to essentially the same thing: being, existence, and consciousness are basically energy states.”
He sat on the floor beside a heavy oak table and pulled the doll apart to show the next doll inside. “Now, if what we perceive is just a state of energy, then it follows that there may be other states we cannot perceive because we exist within a different state. Beside our ‘normal’ world—our normal energy state—there is a parallel or ‘paranormal’ world where other energy states dominate, and a transition zone where the world states overlap. Like these matryoshka dolls, nesting one inside the next. This transition zone is the Grey, and it has its own special denizens, all the weird crossover manifestations of the paranormal and the normal together. Things like ghosts, vampires, elemental spirits, stuff like that. They’re neither one thing nor the other. They have some kind of physical body too massy for a purely paranormal sphere of existence—or can manifest one—but they also manifest the faster, lighter energy transformations that—”
The baby snatched the dolls back and Ben looked up. “You’re frowning. I’m losing you, aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
Mara sighed and spoke up from her work by the sink. “It’s not so arcane as Ben makes it sound. The world is a sea of energy and most people skim along the surface in the normal world. But when you died, you fell into the sea, and when you came back out, you had a