The Midnight Train (The Midnight World, #2)(48)

The Ghost stayed there watching Wilbur. Not saying anything. Just watching.

And, of course, it happened.

Wilbur saw his ghost, wearing the exact same clothes he was wearing, with the same hair and sideburns. The Ghost smiled at him and waved. And Wilbur stared back, in shock.

It was then the Ghost heard the familiar whistle and chug of the Midnight Train. He turned and saw it pulling in, waiting for him on the other side of the bridge, beside the Grand Canal.

Agnes leaned out of the front cab, her face concerned. ‘Come on, Old Bean. No time to dilly-dally.’

But the Ghost just stood there and realised something. He wasn’t going to do as Agnes said. He wasn’t going to get back on that train. In fact, he had something approaching a plan.





The Rialto Bridge and the Quantum Wave Function


The Ghost started walking back the way he had come.

Agnes, however, was following him. ‘You can’t do this, Old Bean.’

‘I’m not getting back on the train. You can’t make me get on the train. Everything after this moment in my life was a mistake. This day here. This was as close as I ever got in life to heaven. So this is where I want to spend my eternity.’

He was now overtaking Wilbur and Maggie, who were crossing the central portico of the bridge and about to start walking down the ramp towards the church they were wanting to visit. Maggie, mid-stroll, tilted her head and briefly rested it on her new husband’s shoulder. She gave him a quick, concerned glance.

‘You look like you’ve had a funny turn,’ observed Maggie. ‘Like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I think I might have.’

The past wasn’t set in stone. Life wasn’t set in stone. And neither was death, thought the Ghost. He could change things.

Death was beyond time, so the past it had once left unaltered could also be altered.

He had never been good at physics, especially quantum physics, but death was helping with that. Now he saw the truth of things in a new way. He understood what Charlie had been telling him when he was high on LSD. That life was a kind of spinning coin.

It could be changed by death and also not changed by death at the same time.

The quantum wave function meant everything was eternally and infinitely variable. Death made things a bit wobbly. It made different possibilities exist on top of each other. Miss Graham was trying to tell him this. Sometimes you had to break the rules in order to live.

Agnes had caught up with him. She peered at him, eyes wide beneath her cloche hat.

‘Oh dear, Old Bean. Listen. You are at the end of your life and the start of your death. Your life flashes before your eyes. You linger where you are meant to linger. On scenes that provide, as a whole, a complete representation of your life. But then, when the time comes, you get on board the Midnight Train and keep on chugging along the track. You don’t stick around. Because as I told you, you can’t be there when your living self falls asleep. You get on the train and then you wait for eternity.’

‘What happens?’

Agnes looked confused so he expanded.

‘I mean, what happens if I am there and he sleeps?’

‘Then the train comes for him too. Potentially … things are unpredictable …’

‘Does he become a ghost?’

Agnes didn’t want to answer this but she had to. Lying was against her principles. ‘No. Not in the conventional sense. He would be there, but via his dreams not his death. So while at the end of the journey you would disappear into nothingness, he would’ – she hesitated, knowing this would be an incentive – ‘just wake up. The way dreamers always do. Potentially … Actually, Old Bean, that is rather unclear. I don’t actually know for certain that would happen. It is probable but not certain.’

‘And in the dream he sees his future, right?’

She gave a reluctant nod.

The Ghost smiled. He was so excited he almost felt alive.

Agnes shook her head. ‘Exactly. And how can someone live if they know their future?’

‘Look, I had a friend. Charlie.’

‘I know Charlie, Old Bean.’

‘Well, when he was high, Charlie always talked about time. About how it is never really the past. That it always allows the possibility of change. Like a book you can keep editing. He knew a lot about quantum physics. The wave function. Reality was always changeable even when you felt it had been lived. The past and the future could interfere with themselves.’

Agnes sighed. ‘I know how it works. As I said, I was given a knowledge of the universe when I opted to help you.’

‘I just think that is what is already happening. I think I am making a change. But to really do it … I need to stay until he sleeps. I need to guide him onto the train and tell him what I have learned by dying. And for the train to show him the future.’

‘It’s all so unpredictable, Old Bean. You are throwing away your eternity, and you will never know if that sacrifice was worth it. I wouldn’t tinker if I was you.’

The Ghost looked back through the crowd but he could no longer see Maggie or himself. He didn’t want to get closer to the train. He sensed it – and Agnes – had less power over him the further he moved away from their spectral magnetism.

He finally spotted Wilbur and Maggie, disappearing around the corner on their way to the church.