Excerpt
Chapter 1 - Awakening

Edward Compton had been ‘asleep’ for just over two months, but it
hadn’t been a real sleep; it hadn’t been caused by tiredness nor had it
been a natural sleep. You see, Eddie was dead. Like his best friend Len,
who had been tragically killed in a car crash a few months previously,
shortly after moving with his family to Kent, Eddie too had met an
untimely end but in rather more strange and unearthly circumstances. His
sad demise had occurred in of all places, the Eternal City – a very
appropriate appellation for the departure lounge for his escape from this
world because, indeed, now Eddie had all eternity to look forward to. On
the face of it, as far as their parents and families had been concerned and
up to the time that he moved away, Leonard Wilby and Eddie had spent
their early teenage years like any other boys growing up in the early
sixties in a typical seaside town on the East Anglian coast. As far as the
two best friends were concerned, nothing could have been further from
the truth, given all the fantastic adventures they had been on involving
time and space travel. Indeed, after Len’s sad passing, Eddie, while still
‘alive and kicking’, had gained great comfort in also miraculously being
part of the ghostly world which his late-departed friend had started to
inhabit. Unfortunately, one such ghostly adventure had led Eddie to pass
for ‘real’ into that ghostly world where he had previously only been a
temporary observer.
“C’mon, Captain, it’s time to wake up!”
A familiar voice echoed in Eddie’s head, but all around him was
still an all-enveloping blackness. The voice continued.
“It’s me, Eddie.”
8
Eddie suddenly felt a warm glow within and the darkness seemed
to lift as bright sunshine began to filter into his new world. He tried to
speak.
“L-Len?”
Laughter.
“Got it in one, mate. Welcome to my world!”
Eddie’s eyes flickered open and he began to take in his new
surroundings. ‘This isn’t Rome’, he thought as he tried desperately to
recall his last living moments in the real world. Fortunately, any memory
of his tragic end had been wiped from his mind ‘forever’.
“Where am I?”
“Fenton-on-Sea, mate. Good old, boring Fenton.”
Eddie looked around him. Now wide awake, he found himself
sitting on a familiar bench on the promenade with the beautiful blue sea
in front of him. Other sights registered themselves with him; the pier to
his right, the lightship on the horizon and Len himself, standing smiling
directly in front of him – all familiar reminders of his home town.
“How …?”
Len finished Eddie’s attempted question.
“How did you get here?”
“Y-yes.”
Len looked sad and with a tinge of guilt etched lightly on his face,
he said,
“I tried to stop you but you just didn’t see it and ….”
Eddie held up his hand – he didn’t need to hear anymore. His
response was brief.
“Don’t, Len. Stop it!”
Len sat down bedside his best friend and put his arm round his
fellow ghost; in so doing, neither of them felt anything physical.
9
“It’s alright, Captain,” said Len. “Look on the bright side. We can
now see each other whenever we want and think of the other advantages.”
“Such as?” asked Eddie.
“Well, for one, no one can see either of us now.”
Eddie’s mood seemed to lighten a little and Len continued.
“And we can go anywhere we want and when we want to as well.”
The warm glow returned and Eddie began to feel an inner
contentment beyond anything he had ever experienced in his real life. He
felt safe and happy to be with his best friend again. What did he have to
worry about? He wasn’t going back to school; he wasn’t going to have to
take any more exams; he wasn’t going to have to go to university or get a
job and, above all, he wasn’t going to die! He was going to ‘live’ forever,
a contented fourteen-year-old, except ….
“What’s up, Eddie?” asked Len seeing his friend apparently in
deep thought.
“How old are we, Len?”
“Well, we would have both been fifteen now, mate.”
“Fifteen?” asked a bemused Eddie. “But I was only fourteen when
I ….”
“Yes, but that was in January. Look around you, old son. It’s high
summer now and, anyway, we’d already moved forward to May when
you had your unfortunate accident, so you could say that you were
already fifteen then, although since our last time travel all happened on
the same day, you could also say that you stayed as fourteen.”
Eddie went quiet while he appeared to do some calculations.
“So really I’ve been dead for about six months in real time and it’s
the summer of 1966?”
“Yes, Captain, July 30th