Near Touch

Chapter 3: The New Reality

Amy liked her room. Awkwardly sprawled on her bed, she was absent-mindedly staring at the ceiling. She found the position to be most comfortable but no one who might see her at that moment would agree. There was an unnatural buzz that was filling her ears. Maybe it was the quiet sound of her thoughts. Or the blood rushing into her head.

She couldn't really put a finger on it.

There it was. The root of the elaborately blossomed problem. Amy did not know what the problem was.

Was it a problem? Or was it a peculiar adventure, promised by all the books and stories? Was she overthinking again? Or adding her own brand of dramatic flair to it?

Amy had reached home, a bit earlier than her usual time and had acted a bit more affectionately than her usual self. Her parents were bemused by the attention their daughter was paying to them. Nine-year-old Leigh giggled when her sister poked her tummy repeatedly as if to make sure she was real. She had gone inside every room like a dog inspecting a new house and touched various objects – the table lamp, the rug, the ornamental plants in the kitchen, Leigh's stuffed animals and more – seemingly at random. Amy even sniffed some on occasion.

Even dinner that night had been an interesting affair. Anne couldn't help but notice how her eldest daughter was concentrating on the tiniest of details. Common stuff like the design and texture of her spoon – things that she had always taken for granted.

Amy's confused and tangled emotions had initially morphed comfortably into disbelief. She had put on her favorite Taylor Swift songs and for a shining hour, she almost forgot everything about Caleb. In her defense, everyone had their guilty pleasures and generic pop music was hers. It was her coping mechanism. She had swayed and sashayed to the light beat in her pyjama shorts with her hair pulled up in a high ponytail – till all apprehension had been cast aside.

In the second hour however, the thoughts found her again. The fear bubbling in her stomach slowly spread jittery unease in her blood vessels. She grew restless.

But if he cannot touch anything, he can't hurt me.

Amy wanted to know why. Why couldn't he physically interact with things? The lack of a scientific explanation for what she had witnessed today nagged her. She decided that she wanted answers. Lowering the volume and switching the playlist to something indie, she dived under the covers and began surfing the internet for clues.

'Near death events are thought to be the most likely causes of out-of-body experiences or OBEs', Amy read. She noted that out of body experiences weren't uncommon and according to one source, ten percent of the human population had come across these, at some point in their lives. Interestingly, this percentage was nearly double among college undergraduates. As each vivid account of this strange phenomenon flashed across the open tabs, Amy's hair progressively reached its standard messy state.

After intensive research, Amy hypothesized that Caleb's condition could be the extreme version of an out-of-body experience. Extreme because he had to be at a certain distance away from his body to be able to roam about Sirencester freely. Unless his physical body was moving too. Which would mean that the zombie apocalypse was upon them. Ordinarily, OBEs were limited to a top view of the person's physical body.

Absurdly, this was the optimistic theory.

Her second theory was that Caleb Dawson had died. And she was being haunted by his ghost. It sounded hilariously tragic, even to a devout pessimist like her.

Under her blankets, Amy had sniggered loudly when she scribbled it in her notebook. It had some major holes. She wrote down those neatly and was secretly proud of her dedication to 'science'.