My name is Amelia. This is the final time that I intend to share my story, and if things go as planned, I hope to live the rest of my life with nothing nearly as interesting happening to me.
I doubt that there was a healthy way to mentally process what happened after the attack on Dr. Mann’s house. Long story short, as far as I could tell, I was not only carrying Grace’s spirit inside myself, but also Jack’s.
It was a stressful time, but there were parts to be thankful for. There was definitely a restful quality to the weeks that followed and I was glad to have the support of Dr. Mann. She had it in her mind that she could help bridge the gap between Grace and I. It was incredible to see her come alive once she realized all of her father’s research was founded in reality, and for lack of a better word she was excited. In just a couple weeks she had absorbed all of his findings, and began adding her own expertise.
“I think we have a way to do this,” said Dr. Mann one day.
“Remind me what you think ‘this’ is?” I asked.
“It all comes down to Grace. What she is, where she came from. There’s nowhere else to look for answers when we know she’s right there.”
We had talked extensively about how Grace and I had talked. Not just talked, but how I had seen her, in that white room of my mind.
“We have to get you back there, or maybe get her back there,” she said, “She appeared under an extremely special circumstance. Not only to protect you and Jack but also to protect herself, and I think it was difficult for her to do.”
She held some of her father’s writing in her hands.
“What my father believed,” she said, “Is that whatever Grace is, she drains you. The more active she is, the more she takes. The belief is that a host can be supplemented with external energy to make up the difference. Basically, we can charge you, and you’ll have enough for the both of you, at least enough for a conversation.”
“What kind of energy?” I asked.
“Tried and true, electricity,” she said, “I’m not saying it will definitely work, but it’s a start.”
Communicating with Grace again wasn’t my biggest concern.
“What do I do if none of it matters?” I said, “Part of me thinks this is just going to be what it’s like from now on. One question after another. Let’s say I can talk to Grace again, she might just say, ‘Thanks for coming by but nothing will change’.”
“You would be the only one that could know,” said Dr. Mann, “Whatever she is, whether she wants to help you or not, I think we bank on the fact that she at least has some sense of self-preservation. If that’s all we have, I think it’ll be enough.”
Her confidence and excitement did make me feel better, and it was a boost in the right direction. I already knew what I wanted to do. I agreed to rest, but I didn’t.
I stayed on the couch, and it definitely seemed like I was resting. I had the TV on, I pretended to read books, things like that. To be honest I did enjoy picking up a healthy appetite again, especially because it supported what I was really doing behind the scenes.
I was impatient, and prideful. Grace’s spirit, her mind, whatever it was, it was there, and I spent all of my time looking for her again. I had done it once, and I knew that there had to be a way to do it again. Everything I did became an attempt at that deeper level of meditation.
Imagine that you’re in a mansion and you’re playing hide and seek with someone that always knows where you are, and they’re allowed to move whenever they want, but they can also teleport, and you’re also blindfolded.
That’s what it felt like. Maybe you can imagine the frustration.
I knew that I was being selfish, but I wanted to find her on my own, and I did my best to forget how much easier things had felt when I wasn’t alone and had Jack.
Oh, Jack. I wonder how often relationships take that big step of one partner housing the soul of the other. I haven’t read any books on dating, but I had the feeling we were breaking new ground.
I know you’re supposed to learn how to live in the moment, but I feel like I deserve a pass on ignoring that advice for a while. I was definitely trying to rush through the time I was in and move towards the blissful part of my life. I fantasized about just sitting down at a restaurant with Jack, just to have a normal conversation, one where I wasn’t casting my words into the dark corners of my mind.
There was a part of me that worried he wouldn’t want that anymore. I mean, would you? Would I? I don’t know how you work through problems that you can’t even fully conceptualize. I didn’t want to speak for him, but I couldn’t really imagine going through all of this just to eventually live my life with someone else.
Can you imagine that conversation? Someone asks me, ‘So, tell me about your last relationship? Why didn’t it work out?’
I’m saying all of that to make it clear how much I love him. He was in this fight for me, and now I’m in it for him. As much as that’s all true, I want what I say next to not sound bad.
As much as I missed him, I wanted to end it all on my own. If there was one last, big puzzle, I wanted to be the one holding all the pieces, and when they were together, to look back and say, I figured it out. Help along the way to get here? Of course. Luck? Definitely. But the final piece, I’m the one that knew where to put it. That’s what I wanted.
I’ll say it again, I know it’s selfish. It also kind of diminishes everything Jack and Dr. Mann and her father had done, even my mother in a way, but there it is. There at the end, I saw it just coming down to myself and Grace.
The hard part though, I wasn’t sure if I could do it on my own. No matter how peaceful I felt, or how clearly I could see that room around me in my mind, or how long I studied the yellow door on the far wall, I could never get Grace to come through it like she had the first time, and I could never hear either of their voices.
The trouble is that most of the time when I thought I was there in that room, I wasn’t, I was just imagining. There was a distinct difference, and I could feel when I was actually ‘there’. A lucid, waking dream that was extremely fragile.
One of the ways I could tell was from the sounds beyond the door. Not the voices I longed to hear, but at least proof that there was something there, humming just on the other side.
As Dr. Mann focused on her experiments, I focused on mine. Every day, from the moment I woke, again and again throughout the day. I tried going on short walks outside the house, but sometimes I would actually end up in the white room, just to come back and find myself standing in the street, being yelled at by people I hadn’t even noticed.
Leaving didn’t work so well, so I stuck to the house, but kept at it. This went on for a couple weeks without too much problem but also not much progress.
It turns out that total relaxation wasn’t what I needed. I switched tactics, and my focus switched to just letting myself feel whatever came naturally.
I, naturally, felt angry.
It wasn’t just anger that I had recently picked up. That was just at the surface, and there was a lot more buried underneath me, like I had been storing it all my life.
So I dug it up with my hands and nails and teeth. It turns out that it wasn’t anger at all, it was fury. The walls of the white room were memorials of my life, both the one I had lived as a victim to these celestial dealings and the one I could have had otherwise. The life that was forced on me had bled into my mother’s, Jack’s, Dr. Mann’s, her father’s.
The moments in our life are equal when measured in time, and we have an extraordinarily limited supply. To be mandated by my circumstances to use my time how I had, without a true end in sight, was something I refused to accept.
I dug deeper, not willing to leave an ounce behind. Layer after layer of resolute dissatisfaction that had been brewing just beneath the surface. It stained my hands red, and I took them with me into the white room.
That color felt better so I changed the walls. My anger was dripping from my hands, and I watched the color spread throughout the room. One by one, each panel of the box shimmered, until everything had changed. The yellow door now sat in a crimson frame, and I stood up for the first time in weeks.
It sounds easy, like the room is just a playful fantasy in my mind. At times, that can be true, but again, there’s a distinct difference. It didn’t matter because at that point the fantasies stopped completely, and from then on it was always real.
Whatever the room was, in whatever place it was built, it pushed back. It was clear now more than ever that it wasn’t just a place I had created, at least not alone. Trying to stand, I could feel a weight on my shoulders getting heavier as I rose.
It didn’t matter. It was dealing with the red room Amelia now, although she had only existed for a couple days, I knew everything had changed.
Of course, I’m not taking the credit, because I realized something, and maybe you’ve thought about it by now.
I wasn’t the only one that was angry, and I wasn’t the only one fighting against that place. Even if I thought I was doing something alone, it would always involve Grace. We couldn’t talk yet, and I might not have wanted to admit it at the beginning, but when I pushed against something, she pushed too. If I stood, we stood.
From then on, at least getting off the ground was guaranteed. One day, the new baseline was taking a step forward. Another, it was three steps. Each time the room manifested around me, it was all reset, almost like a game, and I would walk the same steps, as far into the room as I could get, always keeping my eyes on the door.
Nothing comes for nothing, right? Some price was getting paid somehow, and the real world started getting… hazy. It was subtle at first. I would look around the room, the actual living room I was in, and I would notice these flitting shapes of different sizes, passing through the room. They were hard to pin down and study.
It progressed, and details started to cloud over. Objects started looking more like colors, and for every new step I took in the red room, another piece was lost in the real one.
I couldn’t distinguish sounds anymore, at least not where they were coming from. There was a soft ambiance in the red room that I almost always heard, whether I was there or not, a deep hum beyond the walls. Occasionally I would be inside and hear what I thought was Dr. Mann talking to me. Surely she knew what I was doing by that point, but I don’t remember seeing her. I don’t think I could remember.
Given the effort, and persistence, it was truly inevitable that I would succeed, although the day still came sooner than I would have thought.
It happened on a day I wouldn’t have expected. I changed my routine, and everything fell into place. Normally, I rushed to take my steps, making it deeper into the room in a kind of rush and stumble, basically trying to run headfirst into the door. On this day, it felt better to take it slow, to feel and listen and concentrate on every movement no matter how long they took.
My hands dripped red, and I settled into a shaky union between calm and angry.
“This is it, Amelia,” I said to myself, over and over.
So I returned to the room for the last time, although I didn’t know it. By that point, the world I knew and this one had become so blended, everything overlapped. In one direction there would be a flat red wall, and in the other Dr. Mann’s fireplace. I heard birds from my world, and that deep hum in the other, forming together in some mystic melody.
I didn’t rush, I didn’t even try to stand right away. In fact, I kept my eyes closed for a bit, trusting that I was there, breathing slower than I could have anywhere else. It was real, now more than ever before. I held my hands in front of me and studied my palms. I ran them along the wall behind me and felt the texture. I felt my own exhale on my arms.
Finally I stood, slowly and resolutely. I knew that I would not fall. I walked forward, but slower than I had ever tried, gently placing one foot after the other.
“This is it, Amelia,” I said again, “You too, Grace. Jack, I’m coming.”
My hands shook, and I quieted them. I moved past where I had ever been, and without nearly as much effort as any other attempt, I reached the door, my hand clasped around the cold handle. It was vibrating and felt cold to the touch.
As quickly as I could, I turned the handle and pulled it past me.
There was nothing there, and there was everything.
There was light, and noise, and heat, and darkness, and cold, and fear. The sound was deafening at first, a cacophony that poured in and out of the room.
There was a deep, unnatural twilight spread over things familiar. It was like looking into how a child imagines space, only our world was there as well, pressed into it, draped in an ethereal blanket. Imagine seeing galaxies between you and the building across the street, or having a planet pass through a door you just opened. A complete marriage of the unimaginable and our world.
I knew that somehow everything I saw was real, and while I looked at my own world, I simply had a new eyesight that let me see more than the partial truth I was used to.
There were cities I recognized, and ones I didn’t, mixed in with the nebula. The other world was not uninhabited. I couldn’t discern a pattern in how they moved, but they were right there. Along the sidewalk, people walked past beings they could not see and beings that could not see them. The two worlds were entirely separate, and entirely unified all at once, each hidden beside the other.
I don’t know what the door was, or what it symbolized, but something happened to me when it opened. For one thing, I wasn’t angry anymore. I don’t think I could have been, because when you’re faced with what I saw, you can’t feel anything. The best you can hope for is to stand still and keep your eyes open long enough to try and remember it.
The other thing that happened was understanding. I knew what Grace was. Not the facts, but the feeling, and I finally accepted how we were the same, similar souls from two places only separated by the lack of an extra sense.
If each person had a door like this somewhere inside them, then mine was finally open, for myself and Grace.
I wanted just a little bit more.
I let go of the handle and placed my palms flat on the wall. The slightest push, and I could feel the room shifting. I didn’t need effort anymore, because at least this room, in the midst of everything, now belonged to me. The ceiling lifted up, and all four of the sides swung out and away, leaving only the floor I stood on, and the entirety of that misty ocean around me.
The sounds calmed, and everything slowed down. I heard a soft, quiet song lift itself above all else, and I knew she was there.
Amelia.
I turned back and saw how bright she was. She represented the majesty of both of our worlds. Past the boundaries of our platform, I knew she saw what I did, only the parts I found familiar she called strange.
How do you confront something like that? How do you take this new sense, this new understanding, and just choose something to say? I don’t think you can, at least not immediately.
All I really wanted to do was show her that I wasn’t angry, and that I saw her as myself. It might be anticlimactic, but I turned to one of the most powerful gestures I knew, completely sure she had never experienced it.
I just walked forward and pulled her into a hug. I couldn’t think of anything more human to do for her. What else had the capacity to communicate so much? So we held each other for a while, two ambassadors from either side of the mirror.
When she spoke I heard her voice in my mind, and it had never sounded so clear and calming.
Amelia, I’m sorry.
“Grace, where is Jack? Is he okay?” I said, crying, “I have so many questions, but I’m guessing we don’t have much time. I need to know where he is.”
He’s okay. He’s out there.
She pointed out at the hazy expanse.
He’s looking for a way back. There isn’t much else to do when you’re in an unfamiliar place.
“Can he actually come back?”
Yes. He will. I can get him.
I believed, and felt relieved. The words were still in my mind, and there was sadness in them.
“You don’t belong in that world…”
Grace was looking past me, out over the edge of their white platform we stood on, and I didn’t think I could withstand the emotion I saw on her face.
I like how concrete things are in your world. It’s relaxing to experience things the way you do.
“What was it like before?”
She paused and walked to the edge of the floor, now just a platform surrounded by nothing and everything.
It’s all just time, mixed in with itself. There’s no structure, no rhythm. There’s no beginning, no end. We see it all at once. For you it would be like memorizing every word of an incredibly long series of books, and then realizing the pages are all in random order.
I just listened.
For us, you were the mystery. Your world, people, animals, things we couldn’t see. We knew there was something beyond, but we didn’t have the capacity to explore it. The attention. We could feel your emotions. They made it through to us, and some of us were drawn to it. Some of us were afraid of it. Most were both. For me, I just felt like… I had no shape, and I yearned for something I couldn’t even describe.
Grace almost seemed ashamed, and I just moved to hold her hand, encouraging her.
I was near you, that day on the mountain when you were drowning. I couldn’t see you, or your mother, and if I could I might have been horrified. But I could feel your fear, and I could feel the love your mother had for you, and I wanted those feelings, even though I couldn’t understand them. I don’t know what happened, but I followed your emotions, and I pushed against a barrier I couldn’t even see, and then we were together.
I listened.
You were a child, and both of us were completely foreign to each other. I was incredibly, infinitely afraid of where I was, and I withdrew completely. I didn’t even understand what I was doing. It was a long time before I even listened to the world around you, and started to learn.
Still, all those pages I memorized, all that warped time through future and history, it came out at my weakest moments. I was reaching out, trying to make some sense of what was happening, latching on to whatever I could. When Jack asked me questions through you, it helped focus my thoughts, and little by little, I gained control.
I pushed it, and I’m so sorry for what I did to you. I was completely alone in a foreign world, and no matter what happened, I did not want to leave, but I had no idea how to stay.
“You’re caught between these two worlds,” I said, “And now so am I, and so is Jack. It has to end. You don’t need anyone’s permission to stay, and you don’t have my permission to leave.”
She didn’t speak for a long time, and I could tell I caught her off guard.
“We’ve been together for a long time, and I’m seeing things a lot more clearly now,” I said, “I can tell what your plan is. You think it would be simpler if you just let it all go and floated back out there.”
It’s the only way I can be sure to fix all of this.
“That’s not going to fix anything, Grace,” I said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if you do that, it’ll be a part of our lives all the same, because we won’t let you leave. If you do, we’ll pull you back. You’re here now, and that’s all there is.”
There isn’t really a way to explain the bond that had existed between us. A lifetime of pain and confusion, abandonment, fear, all culminating in the realization that we weren’t much different. I felt an obligation to her, but I still recognized that neither of us belonged tethered to each other. It’s just that we had spent too long together to ever be fully apart.
I saw all these thoughts in her face.
I think there is a way, but it’s not any more natural than what’s happened so far. The trouble won’t end. No matter what happens, one way or another, the place I’m from will always try to pull me back.
“We’ll pull harder,” I said.
Jack will be different.
“We’ll deal with it,” I said, “Let’s end it.”
She nodded, and we took hands one last time.
I looked back out over the expanse. There was so much, and I knew that when I left, I would never truly remember what I had seen. Even the memories of this place couldn’t mix forever in my world.
I closed my eyes and felt Grace let go of my hands.
We’ll find you, Amelia. Stay where you are.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in Dr. Mann’s house completely, no remnants of the other place. There was no transition, it was just like turning off a light switch. In an instant I was back, like I had never been anywhere else. I didn’t move for a while, and a few minutes later, I started to cry.
For the first time that I could remember, I was completely alone. If it was ever hard to notice Grace’s presence in my mind, her absence was absolutely deafening. It felt like my mind had been expanded but only with completely empty space.
It took a while to calm down, and not much longer to realize I didn’t really know what Grace’s plan was. She said to wait, so I would actually wait. Kind of. Out of curiosity, I tried to go back to that room in my mind, but it was nowhere to be found.
Dr. Mann came in just a few hours later. I met her near the entrance, and tried to quickly apologize. To my surprise, she laughed.
“Honestly, I’m kind of relieved,” she said, “Was I excited about the opportunity to participate in one of the most groundbreaking revelations in human history, sure.”
She let out a sigh that did not hide her disappointment.
“But what matters is you’re okay, and I never would have wanted to jeopardize that,” she said.
After she said that, my phone rang. An unknown number. Normally I wouldn’t even answer, but under the circumstances, I was extremely hopeful.
“Hello,” I said.
The voice on the other side was crying. I didn’t recognize the voice, but I knew who it was.
“Jack?” I asked.
The voice cried a little louder, a laughing cry, and I had never been happier.
“Jack, I love you,” I said.
“I love you too,” he said, with someone else’s voice.
I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but I had to ask.
“Jack, you didn’t… Your voice, I’m just…,” I started.
“No,” he said, “There’s no one else. It’s just me. I’m different, but I’m here, and I’m on the way, and… I’m not alone.”
I heard another voice through the phone, one filled with as much emotion as I could imagine, a soft, calming voice I recognized.
“Hey Amelia,” she said.
I cried again. I didn’t understand how yet, but they were both there.
“Listen, I don’t think things are going to be simple for us anytime soon,” Jack said, “We’re going to figure it out.”
“Just hurry back here,” I said.
“Amellia, I have so much to tell you,” he said.
We didn’t stay on the phone any longer. Anything less than seeing them right in front of me was too hard, and they said they would get to me in only about two days. I knew then that it would feel like two years, but it gave me plenty of time to sit and wonder how they had both made it back into this world.
I thought I had an idea how they did it, and tried not to think about it too much. Curiosity is really powerful though, and Dr. Mann was even more curious than I was. She found a news story that pretty much confirmed it.
About three hours before Jack called me, there had been a small plane crash, a skydiving accident. A horribly sad event that cost the lives of twelve people total. It took a while for the responders to reach the plane, and when they did, they only found nine of the passengers.
Three missing. Two men, and a woman.
I’m writing this last part while I wait for them to get here. I can barely type, my hands are shaking so bad. I’m glad Jack thought it would be best to share our story, but I wouldn’t have believed it had it not happened to me.
For me, it feels like the story is just beginning. We need to make things right with the families of the ones that died in the plane crash. We need to find out who the third person is, and if they’re after Grace, which feels likely. We need to show Grace how beautiful our world is when you can truly see it. And I need to talk to my mother.
Regardless of what happens next, this is the last update we’ll post. If you’ve followed along, I just want you to know that we’ll be alright. I’ve never been more sure of anything else.
I don’t even know what the point of all of it is. All the stories that I’ve loved throughout my life had one big lesson they tried to share, and I’d honestly prefer one like that. Maybe a more stable ending, but that’s not how it works.
If there’s any kind of lesson, I think it’s just to find some kind of hope in the tough times. Find hope in yourself and in people that care about you.
There’s also the lesson that we’re not alone, and there is another world sitting right beside ours. I don’t know what that means to you, but to me it makes things feel less random. It makes time feel more precious, and I’m glad we get to experience it one second after the other.
I don’t really know how to end it, so I just will.
Amelia