In nature's void, the darkness bleeds

to dismal death. The ghost concedes

and, in her sorrow, palely cries -

but no-one hears

her voiceless voice. Her sobs comprise

a lake of tears.

Darkness, real darkness, is the most terrifying force of all: a darkness which oozes and washes over you, bleeding its menace into your thoughts, enveloping you in a shroud of helplessness, basking in the power it holds over you; a darkness where silence is absolute, where the joy of light and the hope of warmth are banished.

A darkness which engulfs you in eternity.

And into darkness fell I.

I thought I was dead. So complete was the void into which I had been despatched that only death seemed immense enough to encapsulate it. I could see nothing, nor hear, nor feel, nor smell nor taste: there was simply nothing, just blackness - forever. Time and space became hopelessly intertwined, neither affording any possibility of comprehension. The helpless terror which gripped me at that moment, when I thought I was condemned to an infinity of nothingness, was the most visceral and harrowing experience I had ever known, and God knows I could never endure it again. The towering, deafening silence, the aching clarity of total blackness and the physical torture of incorporeity were overwhelming in their ability to undermine my psyche.

I had no idea where I was. I had slipped behind the walls of the Ripley house, following Jane's exit point from Ripley time, but it was evident that in so doing I had somehow failed to reconnect with my own world. I was suspended between time and space, lost in the past, the tracks of time silted over and turned to black, with no clues to the way home. In limbo, I was reduced to the sum of my thoughts, my entire existence pared to a consciousness which comprehended nothing; and in that state, frightened and alone, a ghost adrift in a dead world, the strange, third stanza of my poem came to me. It had been written much later than the first two, coming almost unbidden into my mind, and I had never either understood nor liked it: the first stanzas had been ominous, but this was far darker even than those. The lilting nature of the metre, slightly incongruous in the early stanzas, conflicted in the third with the rhythms of the language, giving it a hard and edgy feel, while the earlier brooding menace was replaced by nothing more than the promise of misery.

Unable to connect with the world, my focus turned inward; but as I measured my thoughts I felt a curious detachment. I found I was able to access my core, my most personal beliefs, and yet at the same time I could submit them to the dispassionate scrutiny of an outsider: my innermost thoughts were revealed in the unforgiving glare of objectivity. It was the strangest experience, flicking through the catalogue of my life, watching memories accrue and recede, laboriously applying to each a filter of understanding and watching as their meanings stood in relief, ready for interpretation: through impartiality came an understanding I had never before attained, and this understanding - shockingly explicit - changed my life.

An image of Carlee floated in front of me - beautiful, sweet Carlee - and I saw her as both lover and stranger. At first, the two seemed incompatible, but as I watched, as I followed the sweet turn of her jaw, the happy twist of her mouth, her fine, sculpted nose and warm, brown eyes, these apparent contraries resolved, the intrinsic sanctioned by the extrinsic. Carlee's face hung before me and I craved her gentle touch, her tender words, her lover's breath. The notion that I might never again feel her warm against me stabbed at my heart, and in that instant I understood what she meant to me. I had been in turmoil since the reappearance of Jane, my love for Carlee strained by the re-emergence of my childhood sweetheart. Now, thoughts swimming through my mind, sliding from the gloom of misunderstanding into the rarified atmosphere of clarity, I realised what I had done: confused by my love for both, I had compensated by holding each at a safe distance from my affections, affording neither access to my deepest feelings. Unable to understand the depths of emotion awoken in me by Jane's appearance, I had withdrawn to a neutral space, as though I could successfully love each from afar. It was cowardly and unfair, and I knew that in my attempts to succour Jane, I had hurt Carlee. I had been punishing her for the thoughts in my own head.

Since that moment when Jane had appeared by my bedside, I had been overtaken by a primal need and I had been buffetted by its force, dragged unquestioningly towards a destination of its choosing. I had assumed that my love for Jane, being rooted in the tumultuous depths of childhood, was unequivocal and that Carlee, because she came later, was a less substantial attachment. But now, in this unremitting examination of my soul, the truth emerged, stripped of assumptions and preconceptions, bejewelled and golden: Jane was my dearest friend, and I needed to help her.

But Carlee was my life.

And something fell from me then - a weight, the leaden certainty of unthinking affiliation. I saw my affairs through the stark prism of objectivity and from objectivity came understanding.

It's all clear to me now, and I think I knew then, too, somewhere in the recesses of my mind. As I resolved my feelings, finally recognising my love for Carlee, I heard a whispered sob, a floating, weightless cry, and I became conscious of another presence.

"Jane?"

"I'm here," she replied.

"Where are we?"

"Where we should never be."

"Are we alone?"

"Oh, no. No, no, we're not."

Jane's voice was air, a silent ring, a melody of lights shining in the void. I couldn't touch her, but in this fragmented space I could feel her, nonetheless. She was a shimmering presence, a powerful ally in the barren darkness, but such was my confusion I couldn't wholly rejoice in her presence.

"How do we get out of here?" I asked.

"We have to find the way."

"But where is it?"

"We know. Both of us. We just don't realise."

I was in no mood for such cryptic nonsense. My fear swelled, turning to annoyance and spilling over into helpless anger. "Jane, for God's sake, I'm frightened, we need to get out of here!" I regretted the harshness of my words and the force of their delivery, but something impelled me. "We haven't got time to mess about. How do we get out?"

On reflection, my irritation was a logical continuation of the process to relocate Jane in my spirit. Having finally relinquished her unrivalled place at the summit of my affections, such natural emotions were bound, now, to take sway. Through my irritation, however, I felt a surge of compassion sweep towards me, an empathetic swirl of consciousness washing over my mind, bathing me in Jane's love. It was as though she knew, and was signalling her consent. Instantly, I felt soothed, and I hung in confusion between aggravation, love and regret but - with Jane's tenderness filling every inch of my being - confusion transformed into absolute certainty. I knew what I had to do.

Love would have to wait. Carlee would have to wait: my first priority was to help poor Jane.

The blackness around us was as dense as ever, impossibly blocking any trace of light, denying the prospect of life, or motion, or sound; and yet, despite the almost solidity of its texture it seemed to be changing, minute pulses of activity flickering against my consciousness. At first, I couldn't determine what was happening, but finally it dawned on me - it was movement. I was moving, being propelled through time, my mind and spirit speeding through nothingness towards - towards what?

"Jane?"

"Yes, I'm here."

"Can you feel it?"

"Yes, what is it?"

"I think we're moving."

"Harriet, I'm scared." Her voice was small, shrivelled with fear, shorn of individuality, displaying nothing more than vestiges of hope amid the ruins of circumstance.

I felt sick. I seemed, at once, to be floating - free and gentle - and careering through space at the speed of sound, my mind spinning weightlessly in a vortex of white noise. Something was screaming in my head, a furious, hate-filled rejection of consciousness, an elemental force desperately clinging to the present in a world where there was no present, nor past, nor future. I was completely disorientated, aware only that I was moving, but with no conception of how, or where, or why.

In the distance, there was a shimmering haze of light, the briefest, merest trickle of lambency, but it echoed through the darkness, beckoning, drawing, leading us towards it. I didn't know what it was - beacon or portent? - but it mattered little because, moment by moment, we drew closer, observing as it expanded, filled the horizon, formed into a pulsing wall of white. As we advanced, the light seemed to swarm towards us, devouring the darkness which until then had appeared unassailable, its brightness overwhelming my senses. I was drowning, I was suffocating, I was floating in a miasma of light and noise and smell and taste. Both the light and I were moving at increasing speeds, and I braced myself for the moment when I would erupt from darkness into the hollow void before me. Still, my mind was full of tormented, angry noise, battling helplessly against the tide of events. The wall of light loomed in front of me, massive and imperturbable, and I hurtled into its maw. It seemed to pulse as I struck it, as though attempting to repel my advance; but instantly it swept around me, engulfing me, smothering me in the blinding light of existence, and with a joyless groan the blackness to which I had become accustomed was obliterated.

With sickening immediacy, the force which had propelled me through history suddenly arrested and I felt myself hanging defencelessly, spinning uncontrollably, in a space or a moment unknown; and then I was falling, falling and folding, spinning and splicing through the fabric of time itself. The noise of eternity hammered at my eardrums and light seared my brain. I became aware of my senses, of eyes that could see more than light or dark, of ears that could distinguish sound from noise. Around me, the world formed, appeared from the bleach of time and grew, once more, into itself.

And God, how I wished it hadn't.

On to part fourteen