The Walker

Is death the final act of our existence? Are we more than just flesh and bones? These are the questions that have plagued mankind since he developed a conscious awareness of life.

Physicists are now toying with the ideas of infinite multi-verses. If this is true then you may well be alive and well in another parallel universe. What is death? Is it just a door to the next universe, the next level of consciousness? What if you are not a person but an entity, a force that uses electrical impulses to create its own life? If this were to be true you would be at your most vulnerable at the point of physical death.

Life takes shape in many forms and where there's ying there must therefore be yang, anti-life! What if there are demons, creatures that feed not on flesh and bone but the life-force that you carry with you? Time can be seen as a series of events that to us runs in a linear fashion, as if your mind is a camera that captures the events you have witnessed, the love, the happiness, the sadness, the fear. At the point of death, anti-life will find these life affirming memories very seductive.

When you are alone, scared, trying desperately to create a world you recognise, while being stalked by something, something you neither know of or understand, then a hand offered in help is like a beacon of light in a storm. It says I'm here no matter what, it says we can do this together, it says you are not alone. This is the job of the walker, a being that can be both human and energy, that can walk on earth and between dimensions.

In my new book, Death's Door I have looked at the process of death. I was forced to confront the whole issue last year when my lovely sister Theresa lost her battle with cancer. We had both had long conversations about, 'what next'? She was religious, while I think it's safe to say I am not. We had many long conversations about what might happen, some of them very funny. But the most worrying thing for her was that she was to face it alone, as must we all. One thing she always said was, “I hope Dad comes for me?” When her time came I, too, hope that he did, in her final moments.

The conversations both Theresa and I had were the bases of the idea for Death's Door. The fact that we must all face death alone. I thought, what if we don't? What if you are met and 'walked' to whatever happens next? Does it have to be a loved one that walks you, and what if you are confronted with your whole life? How do you make sense of it all?

In Death's Door both the walker and the walked have to face their own demons. They have to help each other make sense of death's nonsense. Though the book is nothing more than a horror story, it does raise the question, 'what are you going to do when death comes calling for you?'