Читать книгу Billy. Going where darkness fears to tread… - Colin David Palmer - Страница 4

It’s not the sort of thing he used to worry about, that’s for sure. He’d lived, and it had been good. He’s an old man now and had enjoyed his Life. He missed Life; he just didn’t let anyone else know it.

Let me tell you a little more about who he is. His name is Billy, at least it was Billy… Billy Nelson. He arrived for the last time about four or five years ago near as anybody can figure – could be forty or fifty years for all he knew and cared anymore but others have been there so long nobody can even remember their last names! At last count there was about two hundred of the more permanents but constant arrivals and departures every day made it hard to keep track.

Billy spent his Life with abilities that would have made Superman envious, but they were abilities that remained oblivious to the majority in his time as a mortal entity. As a baby, a child, he could see and do things that would have seen most committed to the nuthouse. But he’d been born to that Life and remained, relatively speaking, quite normal. Sure, he used to disappear at times when the desire to do so crossed his mind, and he understood the spoken language almost immediately. He could even hear peoples’ thoughts, but it was the visual world that was the most dramatic to him.

Billy could see and hear the other people who were no longer mortal souls, who waited for whatever was their reason to pass onward. He learnt quickly not to let on that he could see them. Experience taught him that whenever he did so, a mob would immediately form demanding he relay messages of advice, love, or desperation to living relatives.

As a two year old it had been simple to ignore them (he may have understood language but communicating it to others remained as mysterious and frustrating as for any toddler his age). It was impossible to disseminate the things they wanted him to. As the years progressed he came to bless the insight that enabled him to switch off to their presence in his Life.

Anonymity became Billy’s friend. Not even his parents accepted his abnormal behaviour and it taught him to be cautious about who knew. Such caution became easier as he grew, firstly through puberty then into an early maturity well beyond his years. He was 15 when things changed dramatically, the change so dramatic that only the whole story could possibly make it clearer.