Even the unclean spirits despise me. Did I already say that? Even the lowest of the low cannot tolerate my presence; even the scum of the earth will not permit me to stay on their patch. They drive me on. They band together and harangue me. Eventually I am left with no choice – I have to get to my feet again and move on. All I want to do is rest. Sometimes I get the feeling that I am repeating the same stories over and over again. They band together and hound me out; they leave me no peace. I can see them in the periphery of my vision – poor dilapidated creatures barely able to hold their psychic form together. I can hear them better than I can see them; I can hear them not with my ears but with something else, some sense that I have deep within me. I can hear their incoherent mutterings. I can hear their deteriorated ramblings. Their complaints cut sharply into me even if the sense they make is limited and so I have to get to my feet and move on. I have to leave the park.

Oddly enough, one of the deteriorated personality shells follows me as I walk out of the park gates, whispering in my ears as the traffic roars past me on the street. It is a man, a masculine presence and I wonder if it is someone who I once knew. The nuances of his voice are familiar even though I can’t understand what he is saying. The spirit is giving me advice but unfortunately nothing he is saying makes any sense. It is like listening to a tape-loop – the spirit is telling me the same thing over and over again. It is comforting – in a very feeble, insubstantial way – to have the company of this helpful, friendly presence after all the hostile, judgemental ones, even if his whisperings make no sense to me. I can’t understand what he is saying but I understand his intent, which is to help me. The ghostly presence is friendly but impotent. It occurs to me that it is like listening to someone’s echo – the friendly echo of someone who is no longer there. Only a few rudimentary reflexes remain. The only psychic entity from the park who showed me any kindness was also the most deteriorated of the bunch, and the irony of this was not lost on me.

Above us the transparent telepathic beings massed in dizzying profusion. They moved through the air with extraordinary grace and speed – dispersing one moment and coming back together again the next. At times they move, at other times they stand still – hovering about me, shimmering like mirages. It is as if they are laughing, or singing. They arrange themselves into strange intricate formations, communicating with each other, and then fly apart again. I had never seen so many of them together before. Whenever they appear the air becomes charged with an odd electric smell unlike anything I have ever smelt before. It is a smell I have no words for. These beings seem to be made of pure intelligence, pure awareness. Even one of them generates this unearthly electric odour – a sky full of them is unprecedented. I could only gaze on in wonder, incapable of understanding what it meant. I didn’t have long to wonder however because the sense of menace was back again – I could feel it on the street. It was absolutely hostile and not at all deteriorated, unlike the poor creatures in the park, who had now returned to their normal pastimes. This new presence was of a quite different order – it was immensely, unthinkably potent. It had me in its sights. My friend disappeared abruptly, his last bit of incoherent advice still hanging in the air. The air was still boiling with the activity of the transparent telepathic beings, a colossal drama of inconceivable significance. That unearthly drama had nothing to do with me though, I realized – my fate was already sealed.