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Captain Matthew McDowell was a man who had never run away from anything while he was alive. Why should that change now?
So he began to taunt the Thing, to tease it through the curtain of darkness that separated them. Luring it closer and closer became a game. A dangerous one, perhaps. But it was far better than hiding from it.
He could sense the creature's growing frustration and it pleased him enormously. One day, or whatever passed for a day in this place, he laughed out loud at its rage.
It roared. The air had begun to shimmer and a smell of decay and putrefaction rushed towards him.
"I am done for," Matthew had thought, not just with calm but almost with satisfaction.
Surely, there was another place to move on to, where one could spend eternity in peace?
He had shut his eyes, in preparation for whatever lay ahead...
When he'd opened them again, the darkness was gone. In its place was a white, curling mist.
He found himself in a room, a very ordinary one filled with bits and pieces of what looked to be old furniture.
"What is this place?" he whispered.
There was an oval mirror on the wall. He went to it and stared at his reflection, then raised a trembling hand to his face. His features were the same as they had always been: the sun-shot chestnut hair drawn back in a queue from a high-cheekboned face, the fierce green eyes, the straight nose, cleft chin and firm mouth... it was all familiar, yet at the same time, alien.
He turned from the mirror and went to the window. He took a deep breath, then pulled open the shutters.
At first, the rush of fresh, sweet air and glimpse of bright blue sky brought a faint smile to his lips. But then he looked down, and his heart leaped into his throat.
Below, just beyond a brick terrace, he could see a wrought-iron gate and a curved trellis, overgrown with lush pink roses.
Bloody hell!
He was in the attic of the house called Charon's Crossing.
It was in the garden of Charon's Crossing that he had been killed.
He sprang to the door and wrestled the knob, but it would not turn. He raised his fists and beat them against the wood panels until his knuckles were raw and bleeding, but the door would not give.
"Let me out," he roared...
And just that easily, he found himself on the door's far side.
He lifted his hand, lay it against the door, and watched in horror as his fingers passed through the surface as if it were not there.
God, oh God!
He was a spirit. A ghost. A thing, doomed forever to walk the dark halls and gardens of the place that had been the scene of his betrayal and death but never to leave it, for he quickly found that the boundaries of Charon's Crossing were his boundaries, too.
His anguish took the form of rage. People moved into Charon's Crossing, then moved out. No one appreciated the nighttime rattles or moans, though they were not always his.
Sometimes, they were the sounds of the Thing on the other side of the darkness. It had apparently passed into this new dimension with him, though it could not penetrate whatever curtain it was that still separated them.
The attic became Matthew's special place. There, among the spiderwebs and discards, no one disturbed him. He was able to find at least a modicum of peace.
He could shut his eyes and let his mind float into something that, for want of a better name, he called sleep.
At first, his sleep was peaceful. But then he began to dream, and the dreams changed everything.
He dreamed of an island, lush and green beneath a hot tropical sun.
He dreamed of Charon's Crossing, and of Catherine, smiling as he held her in his arms.
